


Too Busy Writing Your Tragedy

by thedenouement



Series: it was not a tragedy. it was just life [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Boss/Employee Relationship, CEO Lexa (The 100), F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Lexa is an actual gay mess on the inside, Med Student Clarke, Panic Attacks, Protective Clarke, Raven And Octavia Are Little Shits, Smut, but so is clarke, they help each other heal and it's cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-01-16 00:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 74,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12331635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedenouement/pseuds/thedenouement
Summary: Clarke Griffin is graduating in three months. She has three months left before she loses the relative freedom of undergrad to the looming reality of residences and clinical rotations, and the worst part is she doesn’t know if she wants it anymore.Enter Lexa Woods - entrepreneur, CEO, out of Clarke's league in more ways than one. She has an empire at her feet and a secret she holds dear - and a mutual fascination with the new intern who will  ultimately save her from herself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa receives a visitor and makes a choice.

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

**_PRESENT_ **

Albert Einstein cited the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results, and if in fact that was the case, then Lexa Woods could assured herself that she was a certified mad woman. Three times the illuminated lock screen of her phone blinked at her expectantly. Three times she had swiped a careless index finger across surface, expecting that they had gleaned from the previous ignored calls that she wasn’t available. Three times they called back. Of course they did. It hadn’t gone away before, It wouldn’t go away now, and yet – She shook her head, expelling little brunette strands of hair out of her eye line. As she had said, certifiably mad.

It rang again. Having been put on silent, the vibrations sent the device migrating towards her, closer from where she had shoved it irritably out of her eyeline, and wandering fingers flipped and slammed it face down on the surface of the desk, sparing not so much as a stray glance in the direction of the infernal thing.

Concentration lingered with her for little more than minutes after that. So frustratingly intangible, what little tendrils of attentiveness to her work she was able to muster seemed to evaporate like steam in the air. She huffed. Sliding glasses off of the bridge of her nose, she released them with a clatter onto the desk, perhaps onto the keyboard of her laptop, she didn’t know, she wasn’t looking anymore. She swivelled in her chair and draped one leg over the other within the confinement of her arguably too-tight pencil skirt, appraising the vast expanse of city through floor-to-ceiling glass that was the fourth wall to her office. Beneath her people crawled through menial tasks in the streets like a technicoloured array of ants and in her better days, it was nice. She would watch the girl hailing the cab with an arm through the left sleeve of her coat, haphazardly feeling for the other; the little queue of people lining the sidewalk by the coffee shop like a breadcrumb trail, and it was therapeutic almost, a reminder that life went on. On her worst days it made her antsy, made her wordlessly demand with drumming manicured nails, how life could go on so seamlessly when hers had been derailed so spectacularly. Today was the twilight zone between two extremes, where she neither cared nor wanted to care about the lives of the ants beneath her feet.

She let her head fall against the back of the executive chair, pressing eyes closed to counter the ache that throbbed behind her eyes; a self imposed punishment perhaps, her body telling her that slipping her glasses on four hours into her work wasn’t what she paid for the prescription for.

“Miss Woods, your one-fifteen is here.” Lexa propelled herself around again with the toe of a stiletto, acknowledging the form of her assistant with a smile of thinly veneered reluctance. “Thank you, Harper,” she straightened her posture, and resettled her eyes on her work again, “show them in.”

Harper didn’t have to. Anya was hustling into the office half a second later with the cantankerous air of a school mistress and little more than a dismissive nod to the assistant as she slung herself over one of the chairs facing Lexa’s desk.

“If I’d known you were my one-fifteen, I wouldn’t have let you in,” Lexa grouched, eyes never straying from her work. A brown paper bag was dropped onto her desk, the top folded, along with a takeaway cup radiating warmth and the intoxicating aroma of caffeine that she had been missing since the early hours of that morning.

“I figured you wouldn’t have had lunch yet,” Anya steamrolled over the younger woman's comment. Lexa gave the briefest nod. “You figured right.” Regardless, the paper bag was overlooked in favour for the coffee as Lexa brought the cup to her lips, eyelids fluttering closed at the heavenly taste that settled on her tongue.

“You’re an addict,” Anya shook her head, having appraised the brunette for a few short moments.

Lexa made a noncommittal sound. “Touchè.” Now that she was so suitably distracted, it left time for Anya to appraise the girl in front of her with the critical eye of a mentor come friend. The brunette was, as per usual, impassive and unreadable to all but those who were privy to her tells, all skirt and pressed blouse and business chic, brunette tresses half-up half-down and fallen locks framing her face that she had always been too stubborn to do anything more with than tuck behind her ears when asked. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Hell, the girl hadn’t gained more than four hours a night since...since, and though she had adapted accordingly, Anya could tell it was wearing into her. Slipping into nostalgia for a beat, Anya couldn’t help but see the girl, determined crease between her brows, and an innate stubbornness that had woven itself into her bones, that she had mentored through Stanford. Through business beginnings and investors, through…it. Anya gathered her thoughts and set herself on course. There was a reason she had visited today, apart from in a valiant effort to shovel pastries down the young CEO’s throat because heaven knows that girl ate like she could live off the smell of coffee alone.

“The hospital called me today,” she commented. “I assumed they found you to be unavailable but, it doesn’t seem like you’ve been in all day meetings.”

The look she received in return was little less than glacial. “I’m handling it, Anya.”

“Clearly.”

Lexa huffed, jamming her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose and righting the screen of her laptop that she had pushed to forty-five degrees. “If that was all you came here to tell me, then you’re welcome to leave. I have work to do.”

Anya bit her tongue and thought on her words, maintaining an air of nonchalance. She was playing an exceedingly dangerous game, a particular balancing act that even she hadn’t mastered in the years since...since and she loathe to bring this to Lexa today of all days. But no one else had the nerve, nor the patience– Anya doubted even she had enough herself – to deal with the young CEO concerning the matter and she wondered privately if it was time for someone to give her a swift kick and tell her to get on with it. She reigned herself in and smoothed her fingers over the leather of the chair. “It’s been two years, Lexa. You had an agreement.”

The younger woman looked up, eyes hard but roiling with the complexity of a natural disaster – a hurricane, a tsunami warring behind green eyes and thick lashes. When they first met, Anya was quite sure there the fabric of galaxies had been folded into those eyes; into this lanky seventeen-year-old girl who avoided her classmates and sat in the front of every lecture, taking sniggers from the back rows with a set jaw and a familiar resignation in her stance that Anya had sympathised with. “What are you saying?” Lexa knew exactly what Anya was saying.

“I’m saying it’s almost time, Lex, and you haven’t gotten anywhere. You know what you have to do, what you’re doing now, it’s not healthy –”

“Anya –”

“You have to let her go. You’re barely even living.”

“I’m am.”

“Alexa, look at yourself! You work too hard, you don’t sleep, you live off caffeine and gaseous vapours, I can’t even remember the last time you went out to an event that wasn’t related to this god damned company –”

Lexa straightened and if Anya weren’t herself, she would have sunk under the warning in the younger woman's eyes. “I have a business to run, Anya, I don’t have time for this.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted this for you, wouldn’t have wanted you to lock yourself away in your ivory tower, it wasn’t her.” Lexa was vibrating with volatile anger and raw aggression, but Anya persevered. This needed to be said, they needed to stop handling Lexa with kid gloves and speak frankly. She eyed the overturned phone on the furtherest corner of the desk. “They’re right, you know.”

“Anya, please don’t.”

“You know they are. She would have wanted you to move on –”

“Get out!” Lexa’s voice was low, dangerous. She spat the words at Anya as if she were ridding herself of a poison that permeated her system, and the woman in question tempered her tone with an audible sigh. “Lexa –”

“I said, get out!” The girl vacated her chair with vitriol in her voice, hackles raised and seething. “You don’t get to walk in here and tell me what Costia would and wouldn’t want!” She dragged in a heavy, heaving breath and Anya was afraid her chest would cave in under the ferocity of it. “That’s not yours to decide!”

Standing slowly, Anya raised her hands, palms up, in a little motion of surrender. “Fine,” she conceded. “But you’ll need to do it some time. And the longer you leave this, the messier it’ll get. I can promise you that.”

Lexa watched the woman as she shouldered her handbag and retreated to the glass double doors of the office, statue-like and breathing in aggressive puffs that made her chest rise and fall in short motions. She waited for the audible clink, for the thrum of the bullpen to fall to the closing of the door. It did, and she sunk into her chair, expelling shuddering breaths and swallowing sobs into the deepest recesses of her stomach; breaking would have meant Anya won.

Anya couldn’t win.

Anya couldn’t be right.

She rid her lungs of a heavy breath and set her chin on her knuckles, elbow on her desk. Her free hand danced over the touchpad of her laptop, intent on opening a new document and instead tapping the little calendar icon on the dock next to it in a fumble of shaking fingers. She cursed. Took wild stabs at the touchpad, tapping and double tapping once, twice, three times while the little icon ignored her commands. The calendar sprung open before she could exit the window, bright white with the date encircled and highlighted in red. January 29th, 2017. Two years to the day, since that night, since it, since...since.

 

**_NEW YORK-ARKADIA HOSPITAL, NYC, NY_ **

**_TWO YEARS AGO_ **

_They told her it was a concussion. That “inability to wake up” and “lack of reaction to stimuli” were symptoms, and in sporting one of her own – one evidently less severe – Lexa was inclined to believe the affable words of white coated professionals._

_A week later, they told her it wasn’t._

_She was pacing the corridor when they approached her, a twenty-two-year-old CEO of a seven month old corporation and ostensibly a near fatal accident wasn’t a good enough reason to be unreachable. Her stitches hadn’t even been taken out._

_“Miss Woods?”_

_She stalled, pressing her phone into her chest and effectively silencing the four board members that had ensnared her into a conference call. “Lexa,” she reminded them, tempering the irritation in her voice. She didn't know whether it was from the greying men in tailored suits who handled her like a fragile adolescent that didn’t know her own mind nor her own company, or having to correct the hospital staff yet again that she had a first name and they were not her personal assistants._

_“Of course,” the doctor nodded. He had a white coat shrugged on over dark navy scrubs, the little ‘NYA’ insignia stitched over the right coat pocket, ‘E. Jackson’ stitched on the left. “Is this a bad time?”_

_There was a clipboard in his hands, ever moving fingers danced over the edge of it. Lexa shook her head and ended the call with with a surge of petulant defiance, cutting off a board member mid-sentence with little more than a ‘I’ve got to go’. “No, I was just finishing up.” She hung her hands at her side, waiting. His fingers stopped. “What is it?”_

_“There’s been...complications.”_

_“Complications?” For the sake of brevity Lexa wished his bedside manner wasn’t so good, she had never been one for sugar coating. No one had ever done it for her. Doctor Jackson nodded._

_“The injuries your fiancee has sustained are substantial yet…somewhat indeterminate. We don’t know the finer details of what we’re dealing with here, but we have reason to believe that it is more than a concussion.” The brunette before him blinked, throat shifting in an uneasy swallow._

_“Lexa…” he blew out a sigh through his nose, thinking on his words. “It looks as if the accident caused significant damage to the neural pathways within Costia’s brain.”_

_“What are you saying?”_

_Doctor Jackson had the solemnity of an officer, hat in hand, head bowed, delivering the news of a passed loved one on the doorstep of a family home, and Lexa could feel what little lunch her appetite had allowed her threatening to claw its way back in up an acidic, queasy wave._

_“I’m saying…she might not wake up.”_

_It felt as if rough hands had submerged her in saltwater – eyes and mouth open – where her lungs begged, a searing plea for oxygen and her eyes burnt as if it weren’t tears but sulphuric acid eroding at her eyelids. The doctor was speaking. He had descended into uncertain predictions having addressed the elephant in the room, unsure and apologetic though she wasn’t sure what for – if it was because he felt they should be able to give her more explanations, or because this had suddenly become a confronting reality. She supposed it could simply be his nature, doctors did tend to exude solemnity and bad news. Regardless, there were words coming out of his mouth – “if she does wake up”, “paralyzed”, “abnormal brain function” – the words you hear in human interest stories on the news and whispers a prayer with a palpable sense of guilt that they don’t apply to you._

_Except now they did._

_The world tilted a little on its axis and it made Lexa unsure if it was that the floor was rising to meet her or if she was sinking into a head on collision with it and she woke up a half hour later in a hospital bed and was sure she would have been more comfortable had they placed her on the floor with a blanket beneath her. There was an intravenous drip in the crook of her right elbow, the area was patterned with bruises, presumably from blood tests, and they had stripped her down to a powder-blue hospital gown that bunched uncomfortably at her waist, the hem scratching at her knees. Nurses in scrubs the same unflattering shade milled around the ward and when they noticed Lexa ease herself into awareness doctor Jackson was informed with the efficient practice of a well run institution. He asked her if she had slept recently – she hadn’t – whether she had been skipping meals lately – she had – and informed her that her “blackout” was the amalgamation of concussion, post traumatic vertigo and mild hypoglycaemia from her week of living off little more than caffeine and stale hospital sandwiches while sitting vigil at her fiancee’s bedside._

_The resulting overnight stay and week of supervision at home he prescribed her was not something Lexa, nor her board was happy about._

 

_**THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY** _

_**PRESENT** _

She stared at the date until she was sure the red encased ‘29’ was burned into her retinas and waited a further minute before slamming her laptop with an air of frustrated aggression.

Two years.

Two years Costia had been on life support – assisted breathing, an intravenous drip, unconscious – if you could call if ‘life’ at all. The sight of her, dulled and sullied by the barbarous reality of the world wore into the core of Lexa’s being, scraping abrasions into her skin with each visit that she could do little more with than bandage and forge forwards. But she couldn’t – wouldn’t – let go of the one good, pure thing she had. The person whose embrace had kept together the pieces of herself she was sure would have shattered had it not been there. The validating influence that had coaxed her through years of fractured early life, without which, she wouldn’t be here, let alone _here_.

Because home might be where the heart is, and Lexa still regarded that particular tidbit as true. But Lexa’s home was – is – a person as well as the keeper of the most fragile part of herself. Because a house, a structure with four walls and a roof and someone to praise her ‘A’ plus’s, and encourage her failures, had never kept Lexa for long before she was inevitably cast out. And there was such a long time there, in her most fragile, formative years, where Lexa felt as if she were little more than a plastic bag tossed through the city on the wind. She still did.

But Costia might have been the one person left in this world who knew Lexa as something other than what she had become, other than the robotic workaholic who gave talks, attended galas and walked carpets when asked but did little more. And it felt so inherently selfish to be holding onto her with a white knuckled grip when she was – is – entirely her own person, beholden to no one.

Then again, Lexa had never claimed to be selfless.

In the months following the accident, the doctors were polite, but they were grim, and they insisted it would take a minor miracle for Costia to simply wake up. They were careful in explaining that nothing could be done, and Lexa wasn’t careful in outlining precisely how and why she disagreed with them. She wasn’t a neurologist, she dabbled but she wasn’t really. She was however, a doctor in her own right – a biomedical engineer and the CEO of a seven-month-old corporation which was already surpassing its rivals in the development of groundbreaking medical technologies. They performed minor miracles on a daily basis, enough for Lexa to know that divine intervention was little more than dedication and hard work. It had always been. She had long ago gotten into the business of saving herself, though Costia was a welcomed reprieve that left her floundering a little without the girls presence.

Lexa slipped her glasses off, attentively folding them and setting them aside, and pressed the heels of her palms into her eye sockets until she saw stars, effectively stifling the throbbing in her head, but drawing attention to the hot ache coiled tightly in the cavity of her chest. She had asked for time; they gave gave her twenty-eight months. Twenty-eight months to prove them wrong and she had spent them in icy seclusion, holed in her ivory tower to oversee the growth of her expanding little empire, and at night, to stare at Costia’s vitals until the charts and medical jargon were burnt into her retinas. She had little to work with and even littler to show for it, each breakthrough being rendered null and void by whichever complication, miscalculation or impossibility. And now, she had six months left.

Her fingers smoothed over the crown of her head and slipped easily between brunette locks, tucking stray tendrils behind the shell of her ears in repetitive little motions, and she winced when they came to the stretch of skin at the nape of her neck. There was a scar there, a wonky “L” shape and raised slightly where stitches had been applied with haste and ripped out twice as fast. The pads over her fingers brushed over the marred skin and the familiar pull of a half formed idea lapped at the edges of her awareness like the initial currents of a riptide – unseen and dangerous – and she shoved them further out of reach for fear of what developing it fully would entail. She couldn’t. Not only would that be morally and arguably wrong, but to make it work what she would have to do was so far out of the realm of possibility that it surpassed the limits of not-so-divine intervention. And yet, twenty-two months down, it was her only choice.

 _Choice_. It sounded acrid and unsettling on her tongue because, really, it wasn’t a choice and the way her fingers pried open the lid of her laptop and dragged the little cursor across the screen to open her emails only succeeded in confirming that fact.

She typed with a thinly veneered tremble in the tips of her fingers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke receives an opportunity and attends a mandatory family dinner that goes awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't live in New York, go to college or know anything about biomedical engineering so it's safe to say a LOT of liberties have been taken with this story.

**_NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

“Clarke, a word?”

She was summoned with half a sneaker-clad foot through the door of the lecture hall, halfway to freedom, and stepped out of the steady stream of fleeing classmates to make a beeline for the professor’s desk. “Yes, Professor Renner?”

There was something inherently anxiety inducing about being summoned by a professor that caused Clarke – arguably the top of her class and the “token nerd” as Raven and Octavia liked to dub her – to shift uncomfortably in front of his desk like a high schooler sent to the principal's office as she waited for him to pry his eyes off of his post-class grading.

When he did it was with a pleasant smile and lowered glasses. “I actually wanted to congratulate you on your finals last semester. A near perfect mark, you should be incredibly proud.” He settled her with the knowing expression of a professor regarding his star pupil and something uncomfortable settled in her stomach, that look reminded her of her father. “But then again, I’d expect nothing less from the Clarke Griffin.”

“Thanks, professor.”

Clarke shifted. _‘Proud’_ was one word for it, _‘room for improvement’_ were others. She snared her bottom lip between her teeth and hazarded a guess on which her mother would be more inclined to use.

Clarke was smart. _‘Gifted’_ Abby Griffin liked to say, _‘above-average’_ her teachers wrote home, _‘cough, nerd, cough’_ Raven had Octavia had faux-mocked her through the entirety of her high school – and college – career. But this was her last year of undergrad, med-school loomed around the corner of the next semester and with her mother’s weekly reminders of her practically secured residency at the hospital, the time for _‘near perfect’_ had passed. It wasn’t enough anymore.

Noticing the conversation stall, her professor pushed forwards. “Clarke, I’ve been asked if I would refer one of my students for an internship,” he confessed, giving a little nod, affirming what he was saying. “The work itself would be on a research project – genetics and molecular biology – at The Woods Corporation, you’d be familiar with it?”

“Yeah,” Clarke nodded, disbelief etching itself in the raise of her brows and widened eyes, “Wow.”

Even if she hadn’t been around the hospital enough to hear the company name connected to each new technology they were able to implement, Clarke would be hard pressed not to know of it’s founder; the twenty-four-year-old girl with a networth that included more zeroes that Clarke had seen in her life, and whose accomplishments had seen her splashed across the covers of _‘TIME’_ magazine and _‘Forbes Under 30’_ for the last three years.

“It would be a lot of work, I realise,” the professor was admitting. “Given the nature of this particular opportunity, and the time frame – it would begin within the next few weeks and take place over the course of the semester, perhaps go on into summer. But the fact is I have no doubts whatsoever in your ability to pass the year, and If you agree I’m prepared to allow the work you do count towards your final grade.”

Clarke almost choked. “Wait – _really?”_ Professor Renner nodded. “But I’d be missing classes, shouldn’t that mean I wouldn’t be able to sit finals?”

“Look, Clarke, I’m not going to pretend this wouldn’t be hard, and you will have to play some catch up, but I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for you. We’re all here to help, your teachers, your classmates. My office will always be open if you need it.”

Clarke worked her jaw, on the precipice of saying yes. What he was telling her sounded more than appealing – despite the inevitable late nights slaving over missed classes she saw in her future – but then there was the matter of her mother, the hospital, the summer internship they’d previously agreed on when Clarke said she wanted to take Studio Art as a cross-school minor this semester. She hesitated, tapping the edge of her phone against her open palm. Thinking. “Can I get back to you?”

“Certainly.” If anything, she was lucky Professor Renner understood. Having been her professor for the last two years he had grown accustomed to Clarke thundering into class surrounded by storm clouds because of a recent argument with Abby, and he knew about the deal she’d struck in order to add art to her schedule. She wondered briefly then, why he brought this up.

“Oh, and Clarke?” he called as she made to leave. She turned in the doorway. “I know you’ve made prior summer arrangements but I think this could be good for you. Think on it. Get back to me on Monday, Tuesday at the latest.”

Clarke smiled at him, small but genuine. “I will.”

She emerged from the lecture hall with a crease between her brows, a simmering anxiety in her stomach, and a wish that she could turn left, to where she knew Raven would be getting out of a lecture instead of right to _it_ . The _‘it’_ that had been a storm cloud on her radar since the beginning of the week, leaving her with a permeating throb in her temples at the thought, like a pressure headache.

Her phone vibrated, clutched between white knuckles and Clarke made a conscious effort to shake out the tension from where it had coiled itself in her muscles.

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:19 PM] You up for going out tonight? Party at the boys’ place._

 

She wished.

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:20 PM] Can’t._

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:20 PM] Compulsory Friday night dinner, orders of Abigail Griffin._

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:20 PM] What are you, a Gilmore Girl?_

 

It felt like it. Clarke had to admit to feeling as if the whole idea was fraught with disaster the first time Abby proposed it – little more than a last ditch effort to unify their family, when for the last three years it had been ripping at the seams. Like suddenly she’s brought her in her boyfriend – boyfriend? Partner? Neither of them felt _right_ , partner was too permanent for her liking, despite the fact that as far as Clarke knew he was officially moved in as of two weeks ago, and boyfriend? Well, call her juvenile, but no mother should ever have a _boyfriend_ – and now they’re expected to play happy families.

She had gone silent long enough for Octavia to text again. 

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:22 PM] I’ll do some shots for you, send you some telepathic liquid courage._

 

Clarke snorted. 

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:20 PM] Thanks, O. I appreciate it._

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:20 PM] Stay safe._

 

  _[Text from:_ **_Octavia_ ** _2/10/17 5:20 PM] You too._

 

The eight minute walk to Christopher Street Station took a quarter of an hour, and Clarke dragged her feet and worked at the dread settled in the pit of her stomach that was coiled into a knot of gordian proportions, putting more conscious energy into procrastinating than Octavia did during finals week. When she did get onto the subway it was at peak hour, standing room only. _Figures_. She wondered if it was worth the effort of reminding Abby, yet again, that this wasn’t going to work for her.

It was twenty minutes before she was emerging onto 86th Street – the West Side – breath pluming in the bitter February air, and another ten minutes found her rooted to the sidewalk, appraising the row of picturesque brownstones, all pre-war facades and wrought iron bannisters, drapes pulled against the freezing dusk.

She had a key. It was hooked onto her keyring, and she smoothed her right index finger over the jagged edge, her hands buried deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. A chill worked its way from the concrete underfoot, through the soles of her shoes, up denim clad legs and she nosed a little further into the fabric of the plaid scarf, looped and looped around her neck against the frigid air, the remnants of snowfall that had melted off into white-grey sludge.

It wasn’t as if she needed to be lingering on the threshold of family home like that guy in their freshman year who had hung outside their dorm, trying to _‘befriend’_ Raven for a solid two months. But she hadn’t frequented her parents’ house as much as she probably _should_ have since _he_ moved in. She couldn’t shake the permeating discomfort that settled in the cavity of her chest anytime she thought of another man making her mother coffee in the morning, dropping her little sister off at school when Abby was working irregular shifts at the hospital, or sitting in that second seat at her graduation.

It felt unnatural, unreal, _awkward_.

As predicted, her key slid easily into the lock and she twisted it between her thumb and her forefinger, leaning on the door so it swung inwards to envelope her with an air of home cooking, and hardwood, and her mother's perfume.

“Mom?” She called down the hall. Her response came a beat later.

“In the kitchen.”

Clarke pocketed her keyring and slipped her satchel onto the rack of hooks by the door, taking a fortifying breath. It did little to quell the sense of impending doom.

She stepped into the kitchen unwinding the scarf from her neck, fingers brushing the little dents in the frame of the door, accompanied by pencil marks and shorthand in her father's writing – heights, names and dates. It was the only part of the house that had remained untouched when her parents had done their renovations when Clarke was eight, a week prior finalising the adoption papers for their youngest – a parentless, four-year-old girl who had been hospitalised for a two months who Abby had grown attached two after two weeks. She hadn’t had to do much in ways of convincing her husband or daughter, to bring the girl into their little family. Clarke had always wanted a sister.

They had knocked through the walls between the kitchen, dining and living room, made the space open plan, repainted, modernised, and shifted Jake’s study down to what had previously been a nothing-room to make room for their new addition and within a year it was as if she wasn’t considered to be adopted in the Griffin’s eyes. They didn’t offer the information that she was adopted unless it was necessary. Most of the time, she looked so much like Clarke people wouldn’t guess – same face, Abby’s eyes, hair somewhere in between dirty blonde and brown.

“Clarke, sweetie, how was your day?” Abby was standing at the kitchen island when Clarke entered, chopping salad vegetables and she set aside the knife to pull her daughter into a hug, demeanor warm and familiar. She had been happier of late, more like the Mom Clarke knew when her father was alive and it wasn’t lost on her that this was most likely because of him.

Reciprocating the embrace, Clarke pulled out a stool at the island and slid onto it, hooking her feet into the footrest. “Good,” she nodded. “Long.”

 _He_ was stationed at the stovetop, back to the mother and daughter and he stooped to open the oven in a rush of hot air, balancing what looked like a steaming pasta bake on oven-mitted hands. “Clarke,” he greeted fondly, and he was the kind of person that, if he had his hands free, Clarke was pretty sure would tousle her hair or squeeze her shoulder. A good man, she knew. Her mother looked at him like she was sixteen again and he was her high school crush and for that reason – and that reason only, Clarke swore – she responded with an equal amount of warmth, and a genuine smile.

“Kane.”

It still felt unnatural without the _‘professor’_ in front of it. Marcus Kane had been one of her father's colleges at the university, Jake’s first friend when he had been offered a position teaching mechanical engineering and Clarke knew the man long before he had become intimately familiar with where the serving spoons lived in her mother's kitchen drawers – the second drawer down on the right of the stove if you were wondering. He had had a hard enough time even getting Clarke to drop the _‘professor’_ when this whole thing came about, let alone switch to Marcus. That would just make things unnecessarily uncomfortable when she ran into him in the halls, or lingered outside Octavia’s Poli-Sci lectures.

Kane settled the oven-hot dish on the counter nearby and Clarke noticed that they seemed to be less a member. She stole a carrot stick from the chopping board and Abby fixed her with a faux-glare, one which Clarke countered with a laugh and an easy smile, and a want to bottle moments like these – where they were familiar and happy, not at each other’s throats – just to remind her that they happened. That, during the midst of a door-slamming-accusation-hurling fight, all Abby wanted was the best for her.

She swivelled a little on her stool. “Where’s Cal?”

Abby and Kane exchanged a _look_ , one which Abby shared with Clarke a beat later. “In her room,” the woman answered. “Could you call her down actually? Dinner’s just about ready.” There was something unspoken there, the knowledge that there was a much higher chance of the seventeen-year-old emerging from her room, and staying downstairs, if Clarke was the one to ask it of her.

Nodding, Clarke shimmied to her feet. In the hall, she paced up the first two steps of the staircase, fingers tangling into the intricate rungs of the bannister. “Cal! Dinner!”

Silence.

“Cal!”

 _“I’m coming!_ Jesus _.”_

A beat later the girl in question appeared, all cropped knit jumper and skinny jeans, earbuds snaking from her phone, that was tucked into her back pocket, to her ears. Clarke thought that that was their father’s old plaid tied around her waist – an overshirt he used to tinker with the car he kept in the garage that Abby insisted he would never use, the thing was so far past repair. Cal drew closer, reluctant movements propelling her down the staircase and Clarke could see the grease stain on the left sleeve. She was right.

The girl looked sour as Clarke tugged at her earbuds, pulling them free and slinging an arm over her shoulders. They were similar heights – if not, Clarke was a inch taller – it was easy but if Cal kept growing it wouldn’t be for much longer.

“And hello to you, too, Sour Patch Kid.” Clarke teased, “I’m fine, thanks for asking.” She was sure that that was a smile pulling at the girl’s lips.

“Hey, Clarke. How are you?” Cal responded, dry, but it wasn’t mean. Clarke knew her. She pretended it didn’t get to her anymore – after her parents, after Jake. Pretended that she was all sarcasm and ripped jeans, literally and figuratively impervious, but Clarke would never not see the thirteen-year-old girl she had let into her room the night of Jake’s funeral, voice sobbed raw and eyes rimmed red.

They re-entered the kitchen to find Abby and Kane ferrying food from counter to the dining room, and out of reluctant habit, Cal went to fish dinner plates out of the cabinet to set the table – having left her phone on the counter under Abby’s warning glance – Clarke trailing her with knives and forks.

“Dad always sat there,” Cal informed Kane as the man went to pull out the seat at the head of the table. Her demeanour was soft, voice softer, and the man faltered. They hadn’t had a proper family dinner – all of them together for that singular purpose, not just convenience – since her dad died. Clarke didn’t think that seat had been touched until now, even when guests came over they steered clear.

“Daddy wouldn’t mind,” Abby assured her youngest, and Cal held her gaze but it wasn’t a challenge. She nodded after a beat, and Kane took lead from her, sliding into his seat as the rest of them settled at the table.

Conversation came easily, if on topics a little trivial – small talk, stories from the hospital, the university. Cal sat slouched, using her fork to pick peas out of her pasta bake with a blank look on her face, just on this side of perturbed, as if the thing with Kane in their father's seat was playing on her mind and Clarke had to admit to finding this whole thing rather odd as well. Not as awkward as she had imagined. Just odd. _Different_. She couldn’t tell yet if that in itself was good or bad.

“How’s Octavia?” Abby asked.

Clarke had met Octavia Blake on the bus in second grade in altercation that involved strawberry bubblegum and too-long hair and had been virtually inseparable ever since. They joined Little League together – all too-big baseball caps in their team photos, and a perpetual dusting of scabs on their extremities. They liberated Abby’s high heels from Clarke’s parents’ closet together – Octavia had balanced decidedly better in them than Clarke had despite being three months younger and at seven years old Clarke had found that all too unfair. And when puberty turned them into an unbridled mess of hormones they had whispered together about boys through bedsheets and messy hair. Consequently, Clarke was fairly certain Octavia had a better relationship with Abby than Clarke did herself.

“Octavia’s Octavia,” Clarke replied with a laugh. “She invited me out tonight.” The look she received from Abby was warning. “I respectfully declined.”

Cal made a noise somewhere between amused and noncommittal.

“I talked to Professor Renner today,” Clarke continued, the prongs of her fork scraping idling over her plate. Her tone implied that she wanted to be asked about it – maybe ask wasn’t the right word, perhaps _‘the topic required addressing’_ would be better, because Clarke _wanted_ nothing about what was going to happen next – and Abby raised a brow. “Oh?”

“He offered me an internship over the semester. At a biomedical engineering company – The Woods Corporation. They’re starting work on a new project – research and development I think – and he got asked to refer a student.”

Abby didn’t speak for a beat, she took a measured forkful of pasta bake. “Would it not be better to focus on your studies this semester? You’re graduating in three months.”

Clarke opened her mouth, something scathing and indignant on her tongue, then closed it again. It was remarkable, with her mother how quickly she felt like she was eighteen-years-old again and wanting to pick Studio Arts for her major, with her mother redirecting her at every turn.

“My professor’s confident I can keep up,” she said. “He also said that because of the nature of the project, he’s willing to let it count towards my final grade.”

Cal was eyeing her phone, abandoned on the kitchen counter with the earbuds still plugged into the jack, looking as if she wanted nothing more than to jam them into her brain and blast her playlist on loud. Kane hadn’t said anything, and if there _was_ a time for him to speak up, Clarke thought that it would be now.

“He did mention that it might carry over into the summer, though, depending on how long they need me and everything,” Clarke added. It had to be said.

Abby stared hard. “What about the hospital? You know how many strings I had to pull to get you an internship there this summer, we discussed it last year.”

“I do. But Professor Renner thinks it’ll be a good opportunity,” Clarke shrugged, “so do I.”

“And what about med school, Clarke? What about those opportunities?”

Clarke didn’t miss the way her sister slouched further into her seat, rolling her head to appraise the ceiling and if someone didn’t know better, they would have thought this was boring her. “I never said I was _quitting_ med school, Mom. It’s an opportunity, it’s something different, that’s _all.”_ It was so utterly infuriating the way Abby could do so little, yet manage to apply enough pressure that Clarke could feel cracks appearing in the surface of herself. And she wished she didn’t let herself get worked up, or sucked in, but honestly, a large portion of the time talking to her mother was like talking to the vapid expanse of a brick wall, and any show of emotion had her temporarily off balance.

“Anyway, why should it matter this much to you whether I want to spend my summer in a lab or a hospital break-room? This is me, not you.”

Abby shook her head. “Clarke, you’re being dramatic. We talked about this, we had it planned –”

“Right, like you planned on hooking up with Dad’s best friend?” Clarke was playing dirty pool and she knew it.

_“Clarke!”_

“What?”

“You’re not being fair, and you know it!”

 _“I’m_ not being fair? Mom, you can’t _dictate_ my _life_ for me!”

There was a pause. A beat in the argument where there shouldn’t have been, then, “I thought this was what you wanted!”

 _Was it?_ It might have been. Clarke didn’t know anymore. It had been easy to imagine herself scrubbing in for surgery when she was an over-ambitious eight-year-old asked about what she wanted to do when she grew up. Easy to say she wanted to be a doctor when she was older _‘just like my Mommy’_ back before life had gotten messy.

“Well, clearly you don’t know me very well!” She didn’t know what to say, and it was easier taking the offensive.

“I know you don’t mean that,” Abby shook her head, there was something hard on the edge of her words. It sat heavy like denial, as if the woman was realising how true her daughter's statement was. She hadn’t been _‘Mom’_ since Jake Griffin died, not the one Clarke knew. She went through motions and lived her life but it felt like on some emotional level she was switched off – or at least tuned into a different channel. As if she had been stuck in a stupor of _‘managing’_ – of getting Clarke through school and Cal to therapy and getting dinner on the table at the end of it – and only now, only because of Kane, was she realising the ramifications. And if Clarke was thinking rationally, she would realise that people grieve in different ways; that maybe managing was Abby’s way of surviving and the irrational outbursts between the blankness that perpetuated Cal was her little sister’s way as well. But they were all _so_ different and if she could, all Clarke would do was yell and rage and hit things to such an extent that coming home felt like walking into a house of automatons. “You know what?” she snapped. “It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving.”

Clarke made to stand, leaving the napkin she had balled in her fist on the table, but Abby matched her and stared, _hard_.

“No, Clarke, you’re being immature, you don’t get to walk away.”

Cal huffed at the foot of the table, “Mom, let her go.”

“Cal, why don’t we let your mother and sister talk it out?” Kane said, gentle but firm, the kind of tone Clarke imagined he would use on a hard-to-navigate student, and because she knew her sister, she didn’t think the girl would appreciate it.

She didn’t. “Why don’t _you_ be quiet?”

 _“Callista!”_ Abby scolded. Cal soured, she didn’t appreciate the use of her full name either.

“Hang on,” Kane soothed. “Let’s all take a second to cool down.”

Clarke scoffed. “Forget it.” She left the table and dinner was effectively over. They were all in various states of vacating the dining room; Abby standing, staring _hard_ at her eldest who studiously ignored her, Kane halfway between sitting and on his feet as if he was poised to intercept should a the situation come to blows. Cal was the only one still sitting. She had titled her chair on its back to legs and leaned across to the kitchen counter, snagging her phone and unwinding her earbuds with an imperceptible kind of blankness to her – the way she went when they fought; a little resigned, a little pretending it didn’t perturb her – and watching Clarke as the twenty-one-year-old rattled around the kitchen with too-loud movements, gathering possessions, winding her scarf around her neck with such aggression it was a wonder she didn’t throttle herself.

A beat later, Clarke left, the door slammed and Cal appraised Kane as she nonchalantly pushed earbuds into her ears. “Glad you moved in?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke makes her decision with the help of her somewhat drunk roommates who do make a valid point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a bit shorter than the others sorry but the chapters after should go back to normal length. I also promise that Clarke and Lexa meet in the next chapter (which is already written) so not too long :)

**_THE GRIFFIN HOUSEHOLD, NYC, NY_ **

_SEVEN YEARS AGO_  

 _Clarke wanted nothing more than to burrow further into her comforter, nose pressed to the edge of her pillow where it smelt like home and comfort and subtle laundry detergent, and pretend that the world – anything outside of these four walls and her blanket cocoon – didn’t exist. The fighting downstairs continued and it wasn’t loud. It was hushed and in some ways worse; Clarke wished her parents would scream at each other, not engage in this kind of whisper-shouting, especially when she_ knew _they were talking about her._

_“You okay, kiddo?”_

_Clarke hummed, and the mattress dipped a little under her father’s weight. A hand dipped beneath her generous covering of blankets – she likened them to a funeral shroud, because her father wasn’t the yelling type but he most certainly was going to tell her to apologise to her Mom and Clarke would sooner be caught dead – an unwrapped them, revealing Clarke, all messy wheat-blonde hair and glassy eyes, cheeks flushed from the heat of her feather-down comforter._

_“I’m not apologising to her. I didn’t_ do _anything, she won’t_ listen _to me.”_

_Jake gave a chuckle and it rumbled low in his chest, Clarke liked the familiarity of it. He tucked wisps of mussed hair out of his daughter's face and the girl rolled her eyes, the picture of teenage disdain. At fourteen-years-old she was feisty, and stubborn, too much like her mother and Jake theorised that perhaps that was the reason they fought so much._

_“Your Mom only wants what’s best for you, Clarke. You know that.”_

_Clarke wasn’t so sure. She didn’t really know what they had been arguing about, if she was being honest – one minute she was asking if she was allowed to go to Octavia’s party the weekend coming and the next she was grounded for the week, had no respect for the parental figures in her life (according to her mother) and_ ‘if you continue to argue, so help me Clarke Griffin, I’ll make it for the next three’. _But, the thing was, they both knew it was about_ so much more _than that._

_Tight-lipped and wordless, she extracted herself from her blanket cocoon and settled herself half in her father's lap, an arm slung around his shoulders and right cheek pressed to the wall of his chest, nosing into his t-shirt where it smelt a little like grease and washed out cologne. He wasn’t waiting for a reply, Clarke knew. He didn’t push her the way Abby did into speaking when she clearly didn’t want to, and just because of that the blonde felt inclined to give him one._

_“I just – it feels like…” she sunk into the feeling of hair being smoothed behind her ears. “Like sometimes, she’s wanting more than she can get. Like I can’t be who she wants me to be.”_

_Jake paused for a moment, Clarke could hear his breathing, feel the gentle swell of his chest beneath her cheek. “All you need to be, is who_ you _want to be.”_

 

**_THE GRIFFIN HOUSEHOLD, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Clarke stood on the sidewalk for long enough for the cold to settle into her bones. The very definition of _‘cooling off’_.

It had been inevitable. She hadn’t been able to hold a rational conversation with her mother without it turning nuclear in three years. It was like without a buffer, without _him,_ they didn’t have the balm there to soothe old, sore wounds and instead they were ripped open, stitch by stitch, each time Clarke got less than a _‘B’_ in class – twice that Abby knew of, and because of the killer hangover Clarke had incurred over a _different_ disagreement with her mother – or Clarke brought up the possibility of taking art as a minor. Maybe that was why she brought Kane into the picture. Maybe in her mind, shacking up with her late-husband's close friend equated less fighting with her daughter. Maybe she thought having him meant having one more on her side. Clarke never had been privy to her mother’s logic.

Her phone vibrated.

 

_[Text from: **Cal** 2/10/17 7:02 PM] You ok?_

 

It was brief, and it was familiar, and it _hurt_. _‘No’_ Clarke wanted to reply, _‘I’m not ok.’_ Because she missed her Dad – who was Switzerland in the aftermath of a fight, coaxing her out of her anger infused state with comfort and gentle assurances – and she missed the Mom she _used_ to have – the Mom who performed surgery on her teddies when she was six-years-old and held her when she was utterly sure her heart was broken after her first break up, murmuring assurances that heartbreaks could mend. Clarke wasn’t so sure about that any longer. She didn’t even feel as if home was home anymore, not in the sense that it should be, in the sense that it _had_ been. It was her parents’ place, minus one parent and with the addition of a cheap replacement who tried but couldn't quite live up to Jake Griffin. Clarke hadn’t felt so lost since she had been separated from her family at Disneyland at five-years-old and had felt the true terror of thinking she would never sleep in her own bed again. And it was taking a gargantuan effort not to give into the absolute petulance she felt and throw a temper tantrum, standing alone on the street in the frigid February air.

 

  _[Text to: **Cal** 2/10/17 7:03 PM] I’m fine._

 

_[Text from: **Cal** 2/10/17 7:04: PM] You know Mom didn’t mean it. Not like that._

 

Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a moment. She typed out a message. She deleted it.

 

_[Text to: **Cal** 2/10/17 7:06 PM] Night, kid Xx_

 

_[Text from: **Cal** 2/10/17 7:06 PM] Night._

 

The subway smelt bad. Worse than it had on the way to her parents’ place – mother and significant other, Kane wasn’t her father – and she knew it was because on the way there she had been preoccupied with the simmering anxiety wreaking havoc within her and now all she had was pent up frustration and a little bit of resignation roiling in the pit of her stomach. She got off a stop early, regardless. The motion and the limited space was making her feel claustrophobic and fussy, and she ended up shouldering open the door to her building a half hour later, with wind chapped cheeks and toting a large order of Thai takeout.

She received a knowing look as she passed, no doubt having seen Octavia and Raven totter through earlier on too-high heels and not enough layers to warrant their apparent lack of coats.

Sometimes Clarke would be with them. She hadn’t been a party girl in high school but college was a clean slate, and in her worse moments, nights lost to mindless hook-ups at nameless frat houses were the easiest ways to extent a non-verbal _‘fuck you’_ to her mother after a fight.

Not all the time, though. Not tonight.

Tonight, she smiled at the man who had remained stoically nameless in the year-and-a-half she had lived there and jabbed the button for the elevator twice before it came, taking a moment outside her apartment door to sort her house key from the others on her keyring before stepping inside.

She thanked God for small mercies, like insulation and heating and carpeted floors and kicked the door closed behind her, waiting for the click.

The lights had been left on for her, there was a note on the refrigerator – it looked like Raven’s writing, all uppercase and slanting – and she was glad her roommates had the decency to draw the curtains and put the dishwasher on before the left.

She set the takeout bag down on the kitchen island and shrugged off her outerwear, toeing off of her shoes. They end up strewn haphazardly across her bed, shoes kicked into the bottom of her closet and not for the first time, Clarke found herself thanking whatever deities existed that her days of living in the dorms were over. She was adept at dealing with her own laziness, at having to fish shoes out of the bottom of her closet each day and spend the next four and a half minutes trying to find the left foot, but dealing with someone else's mess, or their utter hatred of hers, was an unnecessary stress better reserved for sophomore year.

That in mind, Clarke knew she had been lucky with this place. Her parents had bought it as a new property shortly before her father's death and the previous tenants had moved out the summer before her junior year started and the only potentially tricky situation Clarke could see was her mother being her landlord, but for the most part it worked. Rent was less than what she could ever hope to get elsewhere. Maybe it made Abby feel as if she were helping, maybe it was out of practicality, a way to ensure she was able to keep an eye on her daughter in the weeks that they didn’t talk in the wake of Clarke’s pettiness. But whichever it was, Clarke got a three bedroom apartment in the East Village for little to nothing, and the luxury of choosing her own roommates – if any. The blonde knew how to pick her battles.

Emerging from her room in sweats and a t-shirt, she plucked the sticky note off of the refrigerator. It was short and sweet. Simply that the party was at Bellamy’s frat, that they wouldn’t be out too late – Clarke snorted, unlikely, but whatever – and they hoped Clarke and Abby didn’t murder each other in cold blood because neither of them were friendly with any law students and were too poor to bail her out of prison.

There wouldn’t be anyone to bail out of prison, Clarke thought, if they murdered each other. Just two cold corpses, a double homicide and a terrified looking Marcus Kane. Cal probably wouldn’t even remove her earbuds from her ears.

She smiled a little at that thought and disposed of the note. Then, having gotten more takeout that strictly necessary, she replaced the note from Raven with her own that indicated to a spare container of egg noodles in the second shelf of the refrigerator – because there was no doubt that when her roommates clattered in the door at some godforsaken hour of the morning, they would be making grabby hands for something to to soak up the cheap beer swilling in their stomachs – and settled down in the middle of the couch with her own container of Pad Thai and the TV remote, tucking socked feet beneath her. She let out the longest sigh.

Exhaustion was a word that didn’t begin to accurately describe the kind of inherent tiredness that had settled into Clarke’s bones. Like she was carrying the weight of not only this year, these finals, but next year, and a further however many years of med school that was required of her, and medical rotations and residencies and, _god_ , family dinners. She wasn’t sure if her mother would continue to implement them after the royal disaster tonight's had ended up being – Clarke had called it, she would have screamed an all too petty _‘I told you so’_ in Abby’s face if she hadn’t been so intent on fleeing the scene – but she hoped for the sake of her sanity and a continued relationship with the woman who gave birth to her that they would all be put out of their misery.

It was all just feeling a little too much like Groundhog Day. She didn’t understand the ethos that everyone seemed to be pushing her to implement; the one that said get up, go to class, come home, study for class, got to sleep and repeat. Because there was a part of her, the broken part, with jagged edges where her father once stood, that had been antsy and reluctant to settle since he left – _died,_ Clarke, he died. It was as if returning to normal life was somehow moving on without him and she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready to sweep him under the rug.

Sleep came restlessly – perched awkwardly with half eaten, long-cold takeout in hand – along with a dream that worryingly likened her own family to the Kardashians which she blamed on the horrific lack of watchable programmes on Friday night TV.

When Octavia and Raven did make an appearance, at a little past two in the morning, it was with an opened-palmed bang on the door, and Clarke shuffled to greet them, bleary eyes and tripping over the sagging toes of her socks, before they could wake the neighbours.

“Get in and shut up!” Clarke hissed, yanking the door open. The two brunette’s compiled the best they were able, heels hanging off of their fingers and smelling a little of cheap beer and Axe deodorant that brought one to many ill-informed, drunk hook-ups to the forefront of consciousness. Clarke was tempted to shove them into the shower, clothed and all.

“Ever heard of a key?” she quipped.

That earned an exaggerated eye-roll from Octavia. “Raven _said_ she had _hers_.” She peeled off her jacket with a pointed look at her companion that came off a little less pointed and a little more like she had kept her promise and done those shots. Octavia always was a girl of her word.

Raven scoffed. “I _said_ I left mine at home.”

“You lost them,” Octavia drunkenly insisted, smirk pulling the corner of her lips, “you were just too busy tripping over Finn to realise.”

“Don’t be a pest, O,” Raven snapped, but it came out a little soft around the edges and alcohol laced, she gave Octavia a warning glance.

There had been a moment, in sophomore year, where Finn had been the infatuation of the semester – Clarke wouldn’t say love, she didn’t think It was love but it was _something_. She had been nineteen-years-old and he had been charming and there with coffee outside her lectures and flowers on her doorstep but then her dorm mate was his on-again-off-again ex and that had ended that. She could see how Raven still looked at him, and Clarke didn’t look at him that way.

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Clarke was in no mood to rehash the awkward love-triangles of a year-and-a-half ago, and the truth was, Finn wasn’t who she thought he had been. What was done was done.

“There’s takeout in the refrigerator,” Clarke yawned, collecting her own half-eaten container and zapping it in the microwave until the contents crackled and she had to pull it out with the aid of a kitchen towel. “I got too much, help yourselves.”

Raven flexed her fingers in the direction of the refrigerator in a childish demand for food, declaring Clarke was a lifesaver in no uncertain terms, and Octavia settled herself at the kitchen island, teetering a little before bare feet hooked around the footrest of the stool. “Dinner with your Mom didn’t do well?” She pouted. “So much for my telepathic liquid courage.”

Clarke snorted. She shovelled reheated Pad Thai into her mouth with the flimsy plastic fork provided. “She told me I was being unfair, immature and was wasting opportunities.” Octavia winced. Clarke was the picture of indifference. “So, I accused her of planning to hook up with her late-husband’s best friend and walked out before dessert.”

“Yikes.”

“I got offered an internship today,” Clarke said, by way of an explanation. It was vague. A little apathetic, as if her frustration and anger and crested and peaked and all that was left within in her was that bone-tiredness. As if she had used up her emotional quota for the day and perhaps she wasn’t as different from her mother as she insisted she was. _Perhaps_. Octavia hummed in acknowledgement and Clarke wondered whether her best friend would be able to remember this in the morning – _later_ in the morning. “My Mom doesn’t want me to take it.”

“Do _you_ want to take it?”

“I think so – yes.”  

Octavia pinned her with a look. “Then take it,” she said, “simple.” She had this innate recklessness about her, a willingness to just _do_ and the consequences be damned that Clarke had never quite grasped. It was the kind of attitude that had her “liberating” the science lab frogs in their Junior Year of high school even though they were sixteen and arguably too old for that kind of behaviour, or so Bellamy had said.

Clarke blinked. “Okay.”

Octavia mimicked her. “Good.” She teetered for a moment and Clarke began to see images of cold bathroom tiles and holding Octavia’s hair back imminent on her horizon, but it didn’t happen, and a half-hour later she bid her sobering friends goodnight.

The weekend passed with little fuss. Clarke padded out of bed later on that Saturday morning with sweater sleeves pulled low over her palms to see Octavia, head in her folded arms, arms on the kitchen counter. The brunette moaned a pathetic request for coffee and Raven shortly provided with a smirk that showed she held her liquor better than the younger girl. And the following Monday, Clarke marched into Professor Renner’s office with determination in the set of her shoulders and a _‘yes’_ on her lips. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke starts her internship at The Woods Corporation. Clarke and Lexa meet, and some of Lexa's past is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note to say that chapters might be coming out a little slower for the next little while because I start study leave next week for my exams the week after and things might get hectic, but hopefully I'll get time to write so I'll try not to take too long!

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

The building itself was all modern lines and reflective glass, professionalism inherent in the shine on polished dress shoes and perfected Windsor knots and Clarke – despite having chosen her outfit in advance and checked twice with Octavia and Raven before she left the apartment – felt oddly underdressed and more than a little out of her depth. And she was wearing a blazer for Christ’s sake.

She tugged the three-quarter sleeves down her arms a little further and fiddled with the turned-back cuff, pressing a thumb against the elevator button twice. Clarke wasn’t a anxious person. She was smart and she was aware of it, straight-to-the-point to where her professors had either hailed her as their best student or found her off-putting and exuberant enough when she was thoroughly liquored up that she had made a name for herself within _that_ sort of crowd. But anxious wasn’t a characteristic Clarke Griffin could lay claim to.

The elevator arrived at the lobby with a tepid _‘ping’_ and Clarke shouldered her way inside, pressing a thumb to the button for the twenty-first floor like the receptionist had instructed, once, then twice, and frowning when the light wouldn’t come on. The door slid to a close in the brief time Clarke had stood there contemplating what to do next, and how nice it would have been if the blonde girl with the easy smile at the front desk had informed her that evidently, she needed an access key, her genetic coding and her mother's maiden name to get past the lobby.

Two halves of the door parted and Clarke continued to scrutinise the unlit buttons. Jabbing the floor in question with aggressive fingers.  

“You need identification to access the twenty-first floor.”

Clarke scoffed at the stranger, “no kidding,” she answered, deadpan. She dug fingers into her pocket in search of the key card she had received and was shouldered out of the way, brisk but gentle, by the person who pressed a thumb to the scanner which registered the print with a digitalised, happy-sounding _‘bleep’_.

“Thanks,” the blonde murmured, edged with irritation and as the digits on the screen steadily climbed, as did the elevator up the shaft. She felt self-conscious of the chipped black manicure flaking its way off of her nails, what used to be intricate squiggly designs as per request of Raven and Octavia the week before hand – “you’re an artist on paper, Clarke, you should be able to do this too! C’mon, _c’mon_ , I want pretty nails!” – now looked mismatched and untidy in the presence of the immaculate french polish on the tips of the stranger’s nails. Eyes wandering, Clarke traced the slim line of the stranger’s arm back to its owner, seeing the sleeve of a pricey looking ivory blouse folded at the elbow, the brunette locks splayed neatly across shoulders; wavy but not curly, calculated and gorgeous. And with heating cheeks, Clarke thought it really would be wonderful if – providing she didn’t spontaneously combust on the spot – she was able to throw herself off of a balcony at the twenty-first floor, because she had just successfully proven her wild incompetence in front of _Lexa Woods._

“My pleasure,” the brunette answered. The words rolled evenly off her tongue as she watched Clarke choke on shoddily concealed surprised with an air of stoic professionalism and a contradictory quirk in the left corner of her lip. Her eyes weren’t the same as they were in the magazines. It was a strange thing to pick out, she knew, but they were different from that brilliant kind of other-earthly green that was splashed across the double-page spreads _‘Time’_ magazine and _‘Vogue’_. They were a softer, grey-green that set a warm, melty feeling alight in the cavity of Clarke’s chest and produced images – soft around the edges, blurred in her mind’s eye – of cable-knit sweaters drawn low over the palms of hands and snow-dusted coats in Central Park in December. The blonde didn’t truly understand what was happening until Lexa was speaking, or so Clarke thought, her lips moving and fitting easily around words the blonde wasn’t registering. She blinked.

“Hm?”

“Your floor,” Lexa repeated. “Is this not it?” She spoke like Clarke’s predicament was simultaneously the blandest and most amusing one that she had been witness to.

“Oh – yes. This is me.” A brief glance at the screen confirmed this, and Clarke backed towards the open doors, tucking locks of wheat-blonde hair behind her ears in little repetitive movements that kept the urge for the floor to swallow her up in check. “Thank you,” she remembered, words falling jerky and graceless past her lips and the flush creeping up the column of her neck was uncomfortable now. She reached up and tugged a little distance between her skin and the collar of her blouse.

Lexa nodded in response. “Have a good day –” her eyes lowered minutely to scan the information printed neatly across the key card clutched uselessly in the blonde’s hand.  “– Clarke.”

Clarke had never had strong feelings about her name, apart from the ones that had her assuring her peers in middle-school that _‘yes’_ it was a girl’s name, _‘no’_ her parents hadn’t been expecting a boy, and _‘actually it’s spelt with an ‘e’ on the end’._ But hearing the way it fell so familiarly off of unfamiliar lips, soft and smooth with a click on the _‘k’?_ Clarke was sure it was the best name in the world.

 

**_GROUNDERS COFFEE CO. NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Anya had told her that she wouldn’t’ve been phased if the nurse had fallen over backwards when Lexa had called the hospital back – in reference to the choice-that-wasn’t-a-choice that she had made – and Lexa resented that. She resented it so she established a correspondence with the hospital over the past two weeks that was frequent and predictable, weekly updates on Costia’s condition never mind that it hadn’t changed in two years and Lexa knew it.

But she was difficult – she had been told as much. Uncompromising and hard to deal with to a point where most people didn’t try – she had a childhood of people who didn’t _try_ , and call it ignorance or innocence, but a nine-year-old Lexa who hadn’t spent more than eleven months of her life in the same place, had resolved that it shouldn’t have been on her to coax agreeable behaviour out of herself when there hadn’t been a soul who cared.

Lexa exchanged pleasantries with the nurse on the other end of the phone as she neared the front of the coffee shop queue, tucking the device into her Burberry coat to slip her card across the counter. They knew her order by now.

Grounders Coffee Co. was all exposed brick down one wall, bare light bulbs and vintage glass Coca Cola bottles for water jugs. There was a bicycle that had permanent residence by the door, the kind with the wicker basket on the handlebars and though urban-rustic-and-entirely-too-trendy had never been Lexa’s trademark, Grounders was the only source of caffeine within a five-block radius of her building that Lexa had deemed passable. It was the kind of cafe that Costia would have found – it _was_ the cafe Costia had found – and the coffee they sold in the lobby of The Woods Corporation had tasted watery and _off_ ever since.

Lexa received her coffee within a minute and she guessed they knew her schedule by now as well;

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at quarter-past-seven on her way to work, Friday at eight before her meeting with the board, and Monday at ten-thirty for her long-standing coffee date with Anya. She thanked the barista and retreated to a table for two in the corner, where her back was to the wall of exposed brick and climbing ivy and the unobstructed view of the street through the glass of the cafe front lay at her right shoulder.

She checked the time on her phone; Anya was late. Sipping her coffee, Lexa let her eyes wander, then scolded herself when she realised she wasn’t searching for her friends dirty-blonde hair, but rather the wheat-blonde locks and cerulean eyes of the girl in the elevator. _Clarke_. She was an intern, Lexa had seen it printed on her employee ID beside her name, and the twenty-first floor housed the onsite laboratories which meant she would be working on _the project_. Somewhere, beneath the lingering anxieties of recent weeks, Lexa recalled the transcripts of a medical student passing her desk to sign off on, a “C. Griffin” with records to a standard she hadn’t seen since her own Stanford days, and she wordlessly scolded the fluttery warmth that burrowed itself into her chest at the thought of seeing her on a weekly basis.

“Morning sunshine.”

A paper bag was thrown onto the table and the young CEO wondered if everything Anya voiced aloud was intentionally sarcastic, or whether the pleasure was reserved for her alone. Anya sat down, depositing her purse at her feet and Lexa watched over her hands, delicately pulling apart the danish she had been offered. “Do you plan to continue this trend of greeting me with pastries? Or is it just a two-time thing?”

Anya popped the lid of her coffee off and stirred the contents with measured little movements. “Only when I’m the bearer of aggravating news.”

Lexa studied her for a beat. “You don’t want me to go through with the project,” she concluded. It wasn’t a question, Anya had made her position on Lexa’s project clear the first time she had brought it up late in her Stanford days.

“You know I support you Lexa,” the older woman started and Lexa was tempted to take her pastry and leave, she was having a serious case of déjà vu right now. “And I have all the faith in the world in you, I have since I met you, but you know what happened the last time.”

“Last time,” Lexa snipped. “I ended up moving two-and-a-half thousand miles across the country and established a successful start-up company that was predicted to far surpass others in its field within the first six months.”

“That’s not what I mean. You and I both know that what you did was irresponsible and unethical.” Lexa pouted. She felt like a scolded child and hated the effect Anya had on her, it was second only to Costia. “You tested an unauthorized project on _yourself_ , Lexa. In _direct_ disobedience to your Professor. You didn’t even have someone there, this is serious, you could have died.”

“Well no one’s testing anything on themselves this time around, I can assure you.”

“You’re not funny.”

“As I’m led to believe,” Lexa responded, deadpan. She picked at her danish, letting flakes of pastry fall to the flattened paper bag below it and listened to the thrum of the coffee shop go through the motions around her. Anya let her. Lexa knew the woman was watching the intricacies of her mind work, formulating the words that were stuck behind the lump in her throat and had been for the past three weeks. A minute passed…then two…then three and Lexa raised her eyes. “It’s my – _her_ – last chance.”

Anya softened. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Lexa snapped. Lips pursed, she sucked a breath in through her nose and nodded, tempering herself. “I do. And it is. And I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t do this.”

Lexa didn’t know if Anya accepted it, or if she had given up for now, but from there she let the topic of conversation move on to trivial matters for the next half-hour before begrudgingly admitting she had to get back to work, leaving Lexa with a hug and a soft, “careful Lex.” And Lexa sipped at the lukewarm dregs of her coffee ruefully, then centralised the coffee and pastry mess they had made.

She was a foot out of the door, face stoic and thoughts elsewhere when a blazered shoulder collided with hers.

“Oh my god, I’m _so_ sorry, I didn’t –” The voice faltered and its recipient locked eyes with Lexa.

“Clarke,” Lexa greeted, the fluttery feeling, like warm melting butter, back in her chest.

“Hi –” Clarke was bright and polite, but there was hesitation in the way she spoke that said she didn’t know how to address Lexa given that their five seconds in the elevator couldn’t be considered a proper introduction. She could see it in the blonde’s face that she wasn’t expecting Lexa to recognise her, let alone speak to her when she wasn’t required to, and then and there – out of petty stubbornness or something else – Lexa resolved that she would always speak to Clarke should the opportunity arise.

“Lexa,” Lexa introduced herself. Clarke knew that – the world knew that – but Lexa appreciated that she kept up the pretence that she didn’t.

“Lexa,” Clarke nodded, confirming to herself, “I'm here solely for work purposes, I promise,” she laughed. It was dulcet and it airy and Lexa decided she wanted to hear more of it, then scolded herself for such a thought. “I’m on a coffee run, you know, traditional interning duties and all that.”

“I believe you,” Lexa whispered faux-conspiratorially. Temporarily dumbfounded by her own temerity, she shook herself free of the encaptivating hold Clarke seemed to have on her. She let the moment of weakness slide and felt stoicism retake the reigns. “Well, don’t let me get in your way, lest the coffees get cold.”

Clarke ducked her head and headed to the counter and Lexa exited the cafe, pausing to readjust the collar of her coat where her neck was flushed and wondering when the frigid February weather had gotten so warm.

 

**_STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CA_ **

_FOUR YEARS AGO_

_Students were filtering out of the hall, binders hugged to chests, jackets shrugged on against the cool temperatures and Lexa watched them through the windowed door of the lab._

_“I admire the innovation Lexa, I really do,” her professor had his fingers massaging the skin at his receding grey hairline. He was balding and in denial.  “But this is simply too unethical for me to agree to. That chip is a prototype,” he indicated to the tech, “It’s dangerous and unpredictable, and we have no idea what it will do. I’m sorry, Lexa, I know how hard you’ve worked on this, but I can’t – won’t – allow it.”_

_Lexa didn’t get the chance to argue. She sat back on her heels, seeing the thinning hair at the back of his head and wanting to scream. Lexa wasn’t a child prodigy, her studies had been the only constant amongst the shifting tectonic plates of her childhood, the ever-changing parade of foster parents who claimed to have her best interests at heart but inevitably wanted the cheque. She didn’t do friends – she was the girl who sat among the stacks in the library at lunch, cafeteria tray balanced precariously on her lap, the one whose greatest fear was the words ‘find a partner’ because inevitably she would be the odd one out, and she pretended it didn’t matter (she pretended a lot of things didn’t matter then) but it did._

_The result of this was graduating both high school and undergrad a year early. And now, nine months into her post graduate degree, the university was claiming that what she had been working on since her head could figure its way around the intricacies of biomechanics – what they had practically developed with her – was too dangerous to be transferred from theory to practice. She blew a sigh through her nose. If anything, it showed what little faith they had in their work._

_She took the chip from the stand, held it between her thumb and her forefinger, then slipped it into the palm of her hand, fingers closing around it to feel the edges against her skin. The thing was a part of her now. Having worked on it for so long, she knew the limitations of her project and conversely, she knew the strengths. The bio stimulant implant would bond with the host so that their needs would become that of the chips. It would find a solution for whichever disability the body had encountered be it reconnecting nerve endings or re-firing neurons to dormant sections of a coma patient's brain. Or it would if they let it. But they brought up words like ‘unethical’, ‘unpredictable’ or ‘dangerous’ when she brought up the chance of doing a trial._

_Costia was forever telling her that she was a ‘stubborn little shit, Lexa Woods,’ but Lexa was sure she had reached a new level of hard-headedness with the actions she was taking now._

_The scalpel cut easily through the skin at the back of her neck. It hurt but her hands were steady, and with pain relief they wouldn’t be. She had had worse. Her breath came out in clipped puffs, in through her nose, out through her nose. A trickle of warmth traced the vertebrae of her spine. Hissing, she smacked her hand, and the scalpel, down on the bench to next her, ignoring the way blood splattered off the blade. The fingers on her other hand uncurled, tilting this way and that, watching the chip catch the artificial laboratory light, then speaking, “ascende superius.”_

_(Costia teased her for learning Latin, she reminded Lexa that she should have been the one with the knowledge of and Piano and long-dead languages – with her Prada-suit-clad Father and her Mother who shopped in Beverly Hills – and not product-of-the-system-Lexa.)_

_The chip was activated by her words and hair-thin wires snaked out from the sides of it. She raised her hand to the cut in her neck and let it manoeuvre itself from there, putting pressure on the wound with the folded-up square of gauze in her other hand. It stung. She found a white-knuckled, vice-like grip on the edge of the bench and eased herself to a sitting position, back pressed against the cupboards, knees to her chest, her breaths were measured and precise. Lexa appraised the face of her wristwatch. The thing lagged by three seconds – she had counted – and was old, but it served a purpose, like everything else in her life – she wasn’t about frivolity – and she counted the beats of her pulse with the second hand, waited for it to normalise._

_It didn’t._

_It went erratic and patchy, rabbeted unpredictably. She was frowning, pressing two fingers of her freehand to the side of her neck when searing, scorching pain burned like the heat of a flame, or the sting of a brand up her spine. It hurt. The implant felt like acid melting flesh from bone. She clenched her teeth down on the collar of her sweater, head faint, pain turning the world soft at the edges. It blurred through salty tears and hyperventilation, the metallic tang of blood caused the queasy feeling in her stomach and the bile that sat in her throat. Unsteady fingers probed the self-inflicted cut, they slipped on the warmth of the blood that stain the skin there. She retched._

_“Quia,” she choked. “Nuia nunc vale.” The implant deactivated. Hair-thin wires retracted and it clattered to the linoleum floor, raining droplets of crimson._

_The world wouldn’t to right itself. It wouldn’t pull into focus, and her chest heaved, and she wa choking, retching. It was violent. Her body threatened to expel the bile that sat heavy and acidic oesophagus, and her head was plagued with the pain of a concentrated migraine. She shoved her chin into the plastic lined bowl that sat to her right – Lexa didn’t like to think of her experiments failing, but she wasn’t proud enough to think that they wouldn’t – and emptied her stomach. The cuff of her sweater bore the worst of the remnants of it from her chin. She steadied her hands with the sterilised, pre-threaded surgical needle, controlled the raggedness of her breathing and pierced the skin of her neck. Her sutures were uneven and messy; she couldn’t see what she was doing, she was relying on touch but her fingers were slipping on the warmth of the blood slick on the skin there and her stomach rolled._

_She reasoned to do this quickly._

_The stitches were tied off with hasty hands, and she leaned over the bowl again, spitting acid. Her sweater was discarded a beat later, pulled cautiously overhead and pushed into a ball between her palms, it was red knit so that the blood that it had absorbed was largely unnoticeable but it was headed for the bin regardless. She scoured the lab with disinfectant, pausing intermittently to brace herself, both hands on the bench when dizziness threatened to send her into a head first collision with the floor, and an hour later she was pulling the lab door shut at her back, nose burning with the acrid stench of disinfectant and metallic blood that made it feel like she had car keys in her mouth._

_Costia was happy with a quiet night in. She had driven up from Los Angeles earlier in the day and had texted to say she would meet Lexa in her dorm with takeout, and it was times like these where Lexa was insanely grateful for all that Costia was. Not that the girl knew, but Lexa didn’t think she would be able to manage a meal in a restaurant, or even in the dining hall; she had a hard-enough time walking in a straight line across the quad to the residence hall, but she managed. It was with a sinking feeling, though, the chip digging into the skin in the palm of her hand like a nagging, sneering reminder that the professors had been right. She pushed it into the recesses of her coat pocket and wanted to forget – for now._

_Costia was cross-legged on Lexa’s bed when the brunette pushed the door open – wiping a hand on her jeans to rid it of excess seat even though it was November and cold – and if she noticed the flush on her girlfriend's cheeks, Lexa assumed she chalked it up to being reunited after two months, or the temperature outside. Lexa was grateful._

_It was Thanksgiving weekend, Lexa’s roommate had driven home – Sacramento, she thought, she didn’t make any real effort with the girl apart from politeness and courtesy which was an arrangement that worked for both of them – and Lexa wasn’t sure how Costia had conned her way out of the mammoth affair that was Thanksgiving dinner at St. Clair household to take the five-hour drive to Stanford, considering Mrs. St. Clair tolerated Lexa at the most. But it meant that they had the dorm to themselves to eat Chinese on the bedspread and spend the better part of an hour ‘reuniting’ with kisses that made Lexa feel woozy because of more than just the feeling of Costia’s body moving under her fingers. She felt ill. But Costia didn’t say anything about the way she had had to steady the brunette – twice – until they were halfway through watching ‘Legally Blonde’ on Lexa’s old PC that was barely functional and didn’t meet Costia’s latest-Apple-product standards. The laptop was propped on a stack of biology textbooks, Costia was sitting up, back pressed against the wall, legs pushed out in front of her, Lexa had her head in the redhead girl’s lap. Her body was curled a little into herself, and she was glad to be lying down because she felt dizzy and sick, and her neck prickled like she could feel the remnants of the scorching pain that was there earlier. Costia had her hands in Lexa’s hair, carding fingers through from her forehead to the nape of her neck, letting her knuckles catch and drag on the knots there. Lexa hissed._

_“Hm?” Costia frowned. Her fingers brushed the hasty sutures at the base of her neck. Lexa knew they weren’t pretty, she had traced her fingers over the wonky line – like a three-year-old had written the letter “L” – when she had adjusted the collar of her coat on her walk across the quad._

_“Lexa…what?”_

_Hands parted the hair at the nape of her neck, and Lexa jerked out of their hold, struggling until she was sitting, chest heaving and lightheaded. Costia shook her head, realisation dawning on her. “You didn’t?” she breathed._

_Lexa didn’t answer for a long moment. She wanted to forget about it, start again when Thanksgiving was over and her head wasn’t swimming. But Costia pinned her with a heavy look and Lexa deflated, “It didn’t work.”_

_“What?”_

_“The chip, it didn't work it…reacted.” Costia was stiff when Lexa settled back into her. “I have to start again.”_

_Lexa could feel Costia’s disapproval like tangible being in the room with them, could feel the way the read-head cradled her like she could protect Lexa fro her own idiocy, like she was something worth it, like she was someone people would miss if it had gone worse. It was a nice feeling, a feeling that she didn’t think she had before Costia and she tried to ignore the discomfort on her chest, the subconscious knowledge that she had done something wrong._

_“What if you don’t?”_

_Lexa twisted to look at her. She tried not to grimace but she did. And Costia saw and sighed, clearly regretting whatever idea she was about to plant in Lexa’s stubborn head. “What if you don’t have to start again. What if it’s not the chip?”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa visits the hospital and receives some distressing news from some overly sympathetic doctors. Clarke continues her work at The Woods Corporation and learns a little more about what they are dealing with.

**_NEW YORK-ARKADIA HOSPITAL, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Lexa didn’t return to the office after her coffee-date with Anya and impromptu second introductions with Clarke. She tried. She walked the long way around the block – regretting the ill-decision she made to decline the waitress’s offer when he had offered her another coffee – but when the toe of her heels crossed the threshold of the foyer, she caught a glimpse of wheat-blonde hair disappearing into the elevator and the reflexive smile that tugged at her lips felt like a sin. She realised why Clarke was there, what this undertaking was in aid of and it felt like she was doing something despicable and dirty.

She dug her phone out of her coat pocket.

“Harper?”

“Yes, Miss Woods?”

“Would you be able to cancel my one o’clock and tell the hospital that I’m on my way?”

“Absolutely, Miss Woods.”

Her faithful assistant was agreeable, thus was her perpetual state, but Lexa could feel the hesitation in her voice like a tangible presence; her one o’clock was with the board. They hadn’t been the happiest with her decisions of late – they hadn’t been the happiest with her decisions ever – and Lexa sympathised with the poor girl for having the displeasure of informing them that Lexa was cancelling on them. _Again._ But this – the hospital – was important. It was penance. A reminder to the feeling in her chest or the reflexive smile, that she didn’t get to _do_ that.

“Thank you, Harper.”

She ended the call and hailed a cab. There were three vacant parking spaces reserved for the penthouse in Lexa’s building, but this was New York, no one owned a car – not in the inner city – and driving…it had Lexa skittish since the accident, she shied away from it. Space was made in the budget regularly for a driver, an expense that the accountant barely batted an eyelid at; dismissing it as the frivolous want of a poor little rich girl.

No one in the city knew her with the exception of Anya and Costia; Lexa Woods was a nobody until she was a somebody. They all presumed she came from money, from designer clothes, whitewashed garden parties and a summer home upstate, and Lexa supposed they were vestiges of truth beneath poorly thought out assumptions. But her money was her own, not dusted and bound by the laws of primogeniture, and her house in the Hamptons was at Costia’s behest – the girl had waited until Lexa was malleable and content, leaning against the kitchen bench in the puddle of sunlight that soaked into the first shoebox apartment that they could get their hands on in the big city, and she had pressed a mug of coffee into Lexa’s palms along with the suggestion of a pretty white house with a beach instead of a backyard when she became the queen of her own little empire.

“New York-Arkadia, please,” she requested, and the taxi driver nodded his acknowledgement and pulled into the traffic. Lexa grimaced at every jerky stop behind a car bumper or stoplight, feeling a headache come on. She needed an aspirin.

But the hospital was twenty minutes from the office, and she schooled her features and bore it for the quarter of an hour of headache worsening stop-starting and stilted conversation, resolving to request her driver next time she wasn’t feeling at peak condition because Gustus was gentle and perceptive enough to know when she didn’t want to talk. She payed the taxi driver with a polite smile and a _‘have a nice day’_ regardless – tipping extra because she had change in her wallet – and stepped onto the curb.

The whitewashed interior intensified her headache – she would ask a nurse for a tablet when she found one – as did the clinical scent of disinfectant that would surely weave itself into the fabric of her clothes before the visit was over. The nurses at the reception bore expressions drenched in sympathy as Lexa passed them, brow creased, and blinking at the offensive carpet patterns and pastel colour still-life paintings of the beige waiting room. She spared them the politeness of the smile that had become her language – her thinly veiled attempt at an _‘i’m fine’_.

“Miss Woods,” a nurse was waiting for her at the entrance to the Jaha Memorial Ward, “Lexa,” the woman corrected herself with a warm smile, “It’s lovely to see you, as always.” There was something in her voice, something encouraging and a sympathetic that forced Lexa to acknowledge the truth that she hadn’t been here enough of late. In the months after the accident it had taken little less that brute force to pry the brunette out of the whitewashed halls, and cushion-less waiting-room chairs of this place. But the company was making demands of her now, she worked in a way that said she must run herself into the ground and stop only when she was shattered irreparably and she wouldn’t admit it – not to herself, nor to the emptiness of her penthouse with a view of the Chrysler building – but hope was wearing as thin as the patience of her board of directors.

Nodding to the nurse – Nylah she thought – Lexa crossed the threshold of the room and eased herself with gentle, measured movements into the visitor's chair, slipping her bag off her shoulder to set at her feet.

“Hey, Cos,” she whispered, sliding her fingers between Costia’s, her touch barely there and feather-light. Lexa treated everything in this room, everything of what Costia had become, with the fragility of spun sugar or blown glass. It was beautiful and delicate and she would press it between her palms and hold it dear if she wasn’t so fearful of it breaking.

Her ring finger was bare and it hurt now to look at the emptiness there as much as had hurt when she first saw the white strip of skin where Costia’s engagement ring _had_ been. It had taken three nurses to coax – more like drag – Lexa out to the corridor to cool off, even while her stitches were fresh at her hairline and her head was spinning with the symptoms of a concussion.

“It’s been a long time,” she admitted. She traced her thumb over the back of the girl’s hand; mindless patterns; tattoo designs that were their high school senior year in the making and didn’t come to fruition and smoothed stray tendrils of auburn hair off of her forehead. Guilt burrowed itself painfully into her chest at the feel of Costia under her fingers. It had been too long. She had failed and ran and it hurt her that she did so, made her feel physically sick and dizzy. “I’m sorry, Cos, I –”

“Lexa?”

The interruption came from the doorway, and Lexa attended to the dampness on her cheeks that she hadn’t been aware of before she turned to face Doctor Jackson, lab-coated and solemn smile wearing; she began to wonder if he experienced an emotion other than necessary empathy then scolded herself for being cruel.

“Ah, wonderful,” he continued. “Lovely to see you. I was wondering if I’m able to talk to you for a moment? There’s something we need to discuss, sooner rather than later.” He meant before she decided to go dark on them again, and Lexa knew it.

“Yes,” she nodded, standing up. “I’m free.”

They took their conversation to the corner. “I wanted to advise you against continuing with the production of your implant,” Jackson admitted when they were settled in the corner and Lexa bit her tongue. It was feeling like Groundhog Day, and she was this close to telling the good doctor to get a number and find the end of the queue because if she wanted to be scolded like a misbehaving schoolgirl she would have gone to her board meeting and had Titus do it there. He was certainly adept enough at the exercise.

“We know about the research surrounding it, and of the previous…trials. But, this seems too risky for what may turn out to be too little reward. Primarily because…”

“What?” Lexa snapped. “Because what?”

“Lexa, your fiancée’s condition is deteriorating.” He sighed. “We want to be optimistic but it doesn’t seem likely that the implant would make a great deal of impact by the time it is finished. I’m afraid it’s a waiting game at this stage, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

Lexa pinned him with a look that felt physically draining, like the utter emotion it took to keep it up, and build a barrier, brick and mortar, against the salty tears that stung acid-like behind her eyes, was hollowing out her bones and leaving her faint and dizzy. “She’s worth it,” she insisted.

“Ultimately, that’s your decision to make,” Doctor Jackson conceded. “But…tread carefully.” He exuded sympathy, but didn’t seem convinced. It made Lexa dig her hands into the recesses of her coat pocket, resisting the urge – something animalistic and primal – that made her want to wind her fists in the lapels of his white coat and shake him. It was one thing being shot down by Anya, at this stage, advising Lexa against the foolish ideas that go on in her head was in built in the relationship between them, practically in the job description but this wasn’t Anya being cautious and Lexa wanted to make Doctor Jackson understand. He needed to know that she was Costia’s and Costia was hers. They saved each other. Everything that Lexa was, everything that she had become was because of her, and Lexa equated these last two years without her to fumbling for the light switch in the dark. Her _life_ was the sickening feeling that accompanied thinking there was one more step on the staircase than there was in actuality, the awful drop in the pit of your stomach when your foot falls and there wasn’t one.

Doctor Jackson didn’t understand; Lexa _needed_ her.

He nodded, giving her a light squeeze on the shoulder and took his leave and Lexa struggled to breathe. She blinked back tears with wet lashes and a thready, “she’s worth it.”

She went back to Costia’s bedside, tangling their fingers, index and middle fingers stroking the skin at the inside of her wrist, counting the girl’s pulse in time with her own.

“I’ll make it better, Cos,” she pledged. She felt so inexplicably vulnerable, a world and oceans apart from the CEO who could command a boardroom with a raise of her hand. She felt like a little girl that had tried on her mother's heels, marvelling at how her too-big work blouse hung off her frame and she longed for the predictability of aged sneakers of her teenage years, a plaid shirt tied around her waist, and the way the Southern California heat caused the hairs at the nape of her neck to stick to the skin there. Her childhood was unpredictability, and a singular solace found in the girl with the red hair and designer sweaters. Conversely, adulthood should have been structured and reliable when all she felt was fake; too small for her executive chair. “You made it better for me – you _make_ it better for me. I’ll do the same, Cos, I promise.” She swallowed. “You’re worth it.”

 

**_LOS ANGELES, CA_ **

_SIX YEARS AGO_

_Costia had a magnetism about her that was unmatched to that of anything Lexa had known in her lifetime. There was something in the richness of her auburn locks or the intimacy in the smile saved just for Lexa that made the prospect of turning down time with her, time away from the almighty mess that was her less than functional home life, her ‘family’, a feat worthy of the gods of old._ _And for the sake of brevity, Lexa gave in easy. Fingers entwined, she dragged feet and let Costia pull her, smothering smiles down corridors and ascending until they found their Eden, hidden away among the rust-laced metal of the football field lights on the roof. Skipping school. Again._

_The ledge was wide there, and it was narrow. That kind of in-between width that had Lexa settled lengthways on her back, head in the nest of Costia’s crossed legs, cheek to denim as her eyes slid over the smog infused line of the horizon, yellow-orange and hazy._

_The football field was green, an island among the sun-bleached suburbs trapped in dry California heat, and the cheerleaders were out, flaunting in all of their too-short-skirt-and-high-ponytailed glory. A laugh bubbled up Lexa’s throat, soft and light. She liked the way it felt. “I can’t believe it did that for a week.”_

_Costia hummed._

_“Oh, I’m so done.” Lexa released a sigh, breath ballooning in the cavity of her chest where that weight sat. That weight of her foster family, of her grades, of the permeating anxiety and her future which loomed ahead like a crevasse that had opened in the ground with no bottom, and no way to the other side. It had all been building and morphing into something that was all consuming and threatening to turn nuclear._

_She rolled her head, looking up at Costia, eyes tracing the curve of her lips the cut of her cheekbones, the way the sun caught the wisps of hair around her head and turned it from deep auburn to fiery red, angelic, like a halo. “One more year.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “One more year and I’m gone.”_

_Costia quirked the corner of her mouth, fingers carding through Lexa’s thick brunette tresses. “What about me?” There was silk in her voice. Teasing, but it smoothed over the abrasions at the very core of Lexa’s being, that had worn at the fabric of her universe, coming dangerously close to breaking the surface and spilling the contents of the mess her life had become._

_“Please, your Mom and her ‘plans’. She’ll have you weighed down by diamantes and flirting with philanthropists from graduation day.” She said it through a thick laugh. Humorously, because if she didn’t, it would have been bitter and resentful. Costia’s mother was overbearing and Channel-wearing and had a voice that grated on Lexa, but she consistently spared her daughter more than an offhanded glance as she walked in the door and words that made her feel as though she should be grateful for the roof over her head and the food on the table and Lexa could only imagine what that was like._

_She felt Costia sag beneath her, draw absent circles on her scalp with tiny little motions that pooled guilt in the pit of her stomach._

_“We’re only a few hours away,” Lexa murmured, making amends. She tapped the toes of her sneakers together, yellowing and dirtied. She needed new ones. “Same state, same time zone.” A shrug. “Won’t have to miss me that much.”_

_“But I will,” Costia hummed, “miss you that much.”_

_Lexa shifted. The comment was fleeting and innocent but the implication was there; they would be missing each other and that had nothing to do with Costia, everything to do with Lexa. Her background, it had altered her more than she would care to admit. It had her walking on eggshells and shutting off permanency, lest she be thrust into the uncertainty of another home when her current family inevitably changed their minds about fostering a sixteen-year-old who flinched at yelling and whose trust came reluctant, pried from white knuckles. It had her feeling as if her very existence in this world was temporary and imposing._

_The family she was with weren’t bad. They were better than the last home she had been thrust into that had left her picking up her shattered pieces and reminding herself she was worth it. They were good people, but they had priorities and a longer standing foster child who was so intent on self-destruction that they didn’t have time for Lexa’s broken pieces, they left her to haphazardly duct-tape herself together and hope for the best. And at the same time – confusingly – they were so intent on making the most of the one child that wasn’t ‘screwed up’, that this – Costia – would be little more than a meaningless dalliance, and thought of degrading Costia to that sickened Lexa to her stomach._

_She hated it the way this – them – felt guilty. The way she hid Costia away like it was a sin, but in all honestly the girl was something to be cherished. She was a sacred that Lexa had to keep selfishly from the harshness of reality, because the angel that kept her from the daily, harrowing descent into less than what she was, was something entirely too precious for this world._

_She sighed, pushing herself to sitting, pressing her back into Costia’s chest and feeling the girl’s arms encircling her again, they draped across her front, fingers smoothing over the little strip of skin between the waistband of Lexa’s jean shorts and the hem of her t-shirt, hiked up from movement and the closeness of bodies. The action left goose bumps under the trail of Costia’s fingers despite the dry, permeating heat._

_“I just need to not be here,” the brunette decided. Her eyes wandered out to the lingering haze on the horizon of smog and smoke and urban fumes, and she likened it to a barrier between her present and her future. Out there was Stanford, uncertainty, the future, the world. Here was whispers of ‘foster kid’ over stodgy cafeteria pizza, her self-destructive foster brother…but here was also Costia. And the pros and cons made her head spin._

_She tucked her head into Costia’s shoulder, felt a brush of lips to her temple._

_“Your foster brother again?”_

_Lexa gave an unperceivable nod._

_“Is he doing better?”_

_She stiffened. He’d disappeared again. They’d found him drunk and high in a gutter in Venice Beach and Lexa had been doing her homework in a stiff-backed hospital chair for the last two nights while her foster parents switched out shifts as to who would watch him sobering up under a powder-blue hospital blanket. “Better than he was forty-eight hours ago?” she murmured. “Sure…Better than he’ll be two days after he’s released?” It didn’t need to be said. If anything, her foster brother was consistent in his habits – harmful, ridiculous and immature as they may be – she could be assured of another emergency room visit. Another week listening to retching from the next bedroom over at three am. The stench of stale alcohol permeating the air outside his room when she shuffled into the hall that morning, gagging as she chased soggy cereal around her bowl because the kitchen had been disinfected to an extent that her appetite was suddenly not-so-intact._

_She earned another kiss, lips pressed soft and lingering to the crown of her head, and it quelled some of the animosity and resignation that coursed through her veins._

_“This isn’t on you, Lex,” Costia promised._

_Lexa sighed, acknowledging. “One more year. One more year. One more year.”_

 

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Whatever Clarke had been thinking when she walked into the laboratories on the twenty-first floor of the Woods Corporation, what she found simultaneously was and wasn’t it. Fetching the coffee was mundane and menial task. The remainder of her day had been just on this side of _odd_. She received an in-depth explanation of their work – coined Project Natblida by those working on it, which translated to literally “black blood” from a language no one could remember – from the head of the project, Becca. Becca showed her around the facility with a lab coat over her clothes and a pen tucked through her brunette ponytail, sipping on her takeout coffee. She was passionate, obviously intelligent and quick. Clarke liked her.

Becca talked her through what they were doing; investigating and experimenting with perfluorochemicals and oxygenators – what Clarke’s professor would call the “building blocks” of artificial human blood – in an attempt to ensure the compatibility of the human body with the bio stimulant implant that their CEO had created. According to Becca, it was all there in theory, the research had been done in years prior, but the project proved to be particularly difficult in actuality; the proteins in the existing human blood samples were reluctant to bond with that of the engineered blood. It was a _complication_ Becca didn’t seem to have time for, and Clarke couldn’t understand what the time-limit was, nor why the whole thing seemed so hush-hush.

An hour into the day, Clarke was summoned into Becca’s office, pulled from where she had been shadowing a team member and understanding what her position for the next six-months would be – the projected timeline, which she had to admit seemed hugely optimistic considering what they had to work with – in order to scribble her signature in the bottom left corner non-disclosure agreements in the slanting doctor's scrawl she had inherited from her mother. It was an arduous task, and it seemed utterly redundant. She gathered that the CEO of the Woods Corporation – Lexa – wouldn’t want the intricacies of the project to be revealed to her competitors, but Clarke thought the paperwork for this all had been taken care of in the fortnight before she started the internship and it seemed excessive to be pleading her absolute and undying secrecy even to those within the company.

Clarke shuffled through the papers when she was done, shaking out her hand and ensuring she hadn’t missed any blank lines with indicators to _‘sign here’_. She laid her pen across the stack, asking Becca purely out of a polite curiosity, and the woman pinned her with a heavy look. It was weighted and knowing – difficult to gauge, reminding Clarke of the looks her mother would give her when Clarke flippantly brought Jake into the conversation with the cruel intention of inflicting bitter guilt where it wasn’t due – or maybe it was, nothing was easy when it came to what had happened to her father.

“I’ve known Lexa for some time,” was the answer Becca gave her when she decided to speak, and Clarke nodded because she didn’t see the relevance. “This project…it’s tricky – close to her heart,” she amended. “She’s protecting herself.”  


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven teases Clarke about a crush she does not have. Clarke spends some time with Cal, and after an argument with Abby, retreats to the lab where her and Lexa commiserate together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the lovely comments I've been getting on this, it honestly does make writing a lot easier! Also, we're just going to ignore all of the implausible things that happen towards the end of this chapter, like an intern being left alone in a high tech lab with three weeks of experience and being allowed to bring food in there because plot needs to happen. Cool? Cool :)

**_CLARKE’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

In the third week of her internship, on a Wednesday that she had no class, Clarke was home first.

There were three yellow stickie-notes on the door – one in Raven’s slanted capitals, one in Clarke’s doctors scrawl and the other in Octavia’s scribbles, the ‘i’s sarcastically dotted with hearts from a bad inside joke. Each indicating what time they would all be back, who had class, what the plan was for dinner that night and whether there was Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough in the fridge. (There wasn’t, Raven was picking some up.) And Clarke took note of them as she toed her boots off and kicked them out of the doorway.

They had decided on burgers and greasy diner food tonight. Octavia had a late lecture and would pick it up from the place two blocks over and Raven wouldn’t be back until six-thirty when she finished tutoring freshman, which meant Clarke had time to herself that she used to strip down to sweats and an old high school football t-shirt that she thought was Bellamy’s before she stole it from Octavia.

Bag thrown on her bed, she set her laptop on her desk and pried it open, pulling up her browser and convincing herself that googling her sort-of-boss wasn’t stalking – Lexa was a public figure, or so her Wikipedia page stated and Twitter bio stated.

It took some clicks to filter through the mindless drabble that came up at the top of the results page – trashy articles with blurred taken-from-across-the-street pictures that could have been written better by eighth graders and showed which cafe Lexa had had coffee at last week and the latest high-profile gala she had attended. Predictably, more serious articles followed, ones that spoke of her accolades and achievements, the progress of her company and her charitable endeavours, but Clarke couldn’t help but notice that none of them said anything about Lexa’s early life, like she simply dropped out of the sky three years ago and onto the map.

Similarly, the CEO’s Instagram was sleek, professional and impersonal. All city skylines from top-floor office’s, Lexa lined up with other suit-clad professionals and pictures of a desk full of work, all poetic or quoted captions, or none at all. Clarke couldn’t say she was surprised that Lexa’s online presence was as calculated as it was in reality.

She followed some links and was on YouTube half an hour later, fourteen minutes through a TED Talk Lexa had given half-a-year ago at a New York conference where she spoke about the imminent advances in her field and wore a pressed white, short-sleeved blouse that Clarke, embarrassingly, found herself tracing the high neckline of, tucked into high-waisted slacks, cheeks cut from marble. Lexa spoke with professionalism, a good presenter without prompts or aid, and she engaged her audience through the necessary medical and bioengineering jargon – some of which Clarke struggled with – with enthusiasm. She was measured and reserved in her approach, but Clarke could see the passion that was there in the odd, erratic, unplanned hand gesture, or the bounce on the heel of her Jimmy Choo’s, eyes alight as if she were discovering this latest medical marvel alongside her audience, but she inevitably recovered within seconds. It was as if she was catching herself, realising what she was doing and reigning herself in in the moment before she became too committed or attached.

 _‘She’s protecting herself’_ that was what Becca had said. Clarke didn’t pretend to understand it but it made her feel inexplicably sad. In Clarke’s mind – in the image built up from magazine spreads, _‘Forbes’_ interviews and an unplanned meeting in the company elevator – Lexa was a warrioress, ironclad. She shouldn’t have to protect herself from anything.

“Who’re we stalking?”

Clarke slammed her laptop so fast her index finger got caught. _“Shit!”_ Her nail ripped, she sucked at blood spreading across her cuticle, numbing the sting. “Raven! _Knock!”_

“Door was open,” was Raven shrugged.

“ _Not_ an invitation!”

“Okay, okay,” the brunette placated, “don’t be precious,” she teased, dropping onto Clarke’s bed and reaching over to drag the blonde’s laptop onto her knees. Clarke cursed herself for selecting the _‘lock after five minutes’_ option when setting up her security preferences – she had always been too trusting.

Raven flung the device open, eyes skimming the screen – the paused TED Talk and the fourteen other tabs minimised in the corner – faster than Clarke could snatch it back. She scoffed. “Lexa Woods, huh? You’re stalking your boss?” Clarke loathed the glee in Raven’s voice, loathed that when Octavia got home it would be double. They would tag-team and tease until Clarke was prepared to confess her sins and a crush on Lexa that she didn’t have – she _didn’t_ – and Clarke simultaneously loved and hated their friendship, but in this moment, forced to choose, she would have to say the latter. “I’m _not_ stalking!” she huffed.

Raven scooted back, reading segments of trashy _‘Daily Mail’_ articles aloud and relishing in the way Clarke’s ears turned pink. She maneuverered herself to her feet, unsteady and sinking on Clarke’s too-soft mattress, laptop held with one hand off the bed. “Kudos to you, you’ve got it all here. Instagram, Facebook, TED, the tabloids – ah, ah,” she batted the blonde’s hand away.

Clarke made a frustrated noise, she wasn’t above tackling Raven to the ground. It would break both of them, the laptop, _and_ incur noise complaints but, all options weighed up, it would be worth it. The second of fleeting rationality that told her arguing with her mother about a dent in the floor of her property wasn’t something she was in the headspace for was the only thing stopping her. “Give it!”

“I’m not done, Clarke,” Raven squirmed – laptop in hand – out of Clarke’s reach. “Sharing is caring.”

“Raven, you’re _twenty-one_ , don’t be a child!”

“Not my fault that you’re hornier than a pubescent teenage boy.”

“Am _not_ – _ugh!”_

They were flushed-faced when Octavia got home an hour later. Hair mussed, chests heaving and sticky with sweat in a way that would have been wildly inappropriate without context, and Octavia, laden with diner-down-the-street-branded paper bags, made _sure_ to mention that. But Clarke had her password changed and her browser closed and it had been worth wrestling with Raven for the better part of forty-five minutes, and locking herself in the bathroom for the last fifteen while she deleted her admittedly mundane but questionable-all-the-same search history.

“Clarke, you have sex hair,” Octavia informed her, unconcerned as she slung her bag over one of their barstools and laid the takeout on the kitchen island – burgers, fries, drinks, a chocolate shake for herself. Clarke wondered where the girl put it, then remembered her Monday night kickboxing classes. She pierced the lid of her diet Coke with the provided paper-wrapped straw and slipped onto a stool, souring, “duly noted.”

“She’s practicing for when her and Lexa have a quickie in the Woods Corporation supply closet,” Raven smirked, she was putting the elastic on her wrist to good use by tying her hair back from where it clung to the nape of her neck, regulating her breathing and Clarke though the both of them should have taken Octavia up on her offer to go to the gym.

“I could kick you both out,” Clarke groaned, face down in her arms, “right here,” her cheeks were hot and the countertop was cold, “right now.” She wasn’t sure if it was from physical exertion or pure embarrassment – the latter of which would be ridiculous because she had met Lexa twice and was stalking-not-stalking her out of polite curiosity. Or she would be if her best friends didn’t have the emotional maturity of sixth graders.

“Oh, baby,” Raven cooed, her voice was teasing and mild irritability sunk into Clarke’s bones. The elder brunette pulled out a stool next to Clarke and popped a fry into her mouth, washing it down with a sip of Octavia’s shake and the younger girl squawked in agitation. “No one’s _blaming_ you Clarke, the girl’s _stunning_. I don’t think anyone in this room would oppose to being caught in a supply closet with Lexa Woods.”

“Octavia’s the straightest thing I know,” Clarke protested.

“I know,” Raven said, “and it sickens me,” she teased.

Octavia flipped her off, expression petulant – emotional maturity of sixth graders, Clarke reaffirmed her point – “I’d make an exception for Lexa Woods, though.”

Clarke groaned, “can we stop saying her full name? It’s weird.”

“Why? Because you’re so used to calling her just Lexa?” Octavia was proud of that one, Clarke had her head in her arms and wasn’t looking, but she could _feel_ the smugness it, tangible and infuriating.

“I’ve met her twice, I haven’t spoken to her in three weeks,” Clarke shook her head, “she won’t even remember me.” She wasn’t lying. There had been no more chanced meetings in elevators or at Grounders. Clarke hadn’t laid eyes on her aside from the weekly meetings Lexa had instituted for updates on the project, where she would drum her manicure on the surface of the desk and keep her eyes on Becca as the women retailed her team's latest findings – which was to say, not a lot. And with each useless report, Clarke could see something implacable wilt in the set of the brunette’s shoulders. She looked so sad, resigned. The failures eroded at her like waves on the shore and no one seemed to notice. Clarke was unsure of the feeling the sunk itself into the pit of her stomach, it coiled into a knot she resolved to untangle at a later date, unwilling to unearth the intricacies of her non-existent – since Finn – love-life in the presence of Raven and Octavia in this moment, especially because it was evident they didn’t believe her.

 

**_NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_  

“Are you going to Friday night dinner this week?”  
Clarke hummed in the affirmative, “yes,” but it was anything but enthusiastic. She had attended six Friday night dinners since the ill-fated first one and sat, maintaining a thin veneer of politeness, willing herself to be nice because her mother was _trying._ Or she hadn’t mentioned the internship so Clarke repaid her by not stirring things.

Octavia made a sympathetic sound and Clarke agreed. At least the brunette had moved on from teasing her about Lexa, Clarke had suffered for two hours last night before they left her alone when she got smart and decided not to react, the tactic her father had taught her for getting rid of bullies in grade school – _‘don’t react, Clarke. Stop giving them something to go off and they’ll get bored’_ – which had been difficult for seven-year-old Clarke who had felt it was only logical to respond, but all too easy now. She sipped at her latte from the coffee cart on campus and nosed further into her scarf. “Typical of my mother to make it for one of the only day’s worth going out.” Just when she could do with blowing off steam too, but by the time she had made it through a dinner and dessert making polite conversation about hospital shifts and political science, all the while making comical faces to her bored look sister across the table, Clarke wasn’t in the mood to meet Octavia and Raven at the frat house _or_ the bar.

“You can’t ask her to change nights?” Octavia suggested, knowing it wasn’t an option, not where Abigail Griffin was concerned. It would lead to debates over the fact that were at college to study _‘not to spend your nights drinking_ ’ that Clarke didn’t think would leave either of them in a good condition.

“You’d have better luck than me –“ her phone started vibrating in the left pocket of the jacket where her hand was currently taking refuge from the cold temperature, “it’s her,” she mumbled, “hi, Mom.”

“Clarke!” At the other end of the line, Abby sounded equal parts harassed and annoyed, Clarke could imagine her trying to duck away into her office, waving nurses and lost-looking interns out of her path. “Hey, sweetie, I’m in a bit of a crisis, here. I’m assisting on a surgery in ten minutes, and Cal’s in the principal's office. They’ve told me it’s nothing serious but they want someone to pick her up and Marcus has lectures that he can’t find cover for, I was wondering if you had class? If not –”

“I can pick Cal up, Mom, it’s fine.” It was three, her last lecture had been a half-hour ago and her and Octavia had picked up coffee with the intentions of going home and not moving on one of their rare free nights.

“Thank you,” Abby sighed. “I’ll see you at home.”

Clarke nodded and heard the end tone, she pulled the phone from her ear, draining her latte, “Cal needs to be picked up,” she half-informed, half-apologised to Octavia.

“What’d lil’ Griffin do this time?”

Clarke pulled up her sister's contact, shrugging, “‘bout to find out.”

 

_[Text to: **Cal** 3/16/17 3:08 PM] Mom just called._

 

_[Text from: **Cal** 3/16/17 3:08 PM] I didn’t do anything. _

 

_[Text from: **Cal** 3/16/17 3:09 PM] They’re overreacting._

 

Clarke hesitated, thumbing over the keyboard, considering 

 

_[Text to: **Cal** 3/16/17 3:08 PM] I believe you. I’ll be there in half an hour._

 

She was, in fact, there in twenty-four minutes and navigating the halls of her old high-school with the practiced ease of someone who had done it before. The receptionist outside of the principal's office gave her an _‘I know you’_ kind of a smile as Clarke walked into the foyer area, all dark-wood panelling of a building that had been there for a century.

Cal sat in one of the four straight-backed chairs on either side of the double doors of the principal's office, ramrod straight, black Oxfords planted firmly on the ground. Her blazer sleeves were rolled up and shirt untucked from her beige and maroon plaid skirt – a clear point of contention at this school, Clarke remembered Octavia constantly being pulled up for violating the dress code and the elder Griffin had to admit if she was here now for the same reason she agreed with her sister: they were overreacting.

“Cal,” Clarke said, soft and even so as to not disrupt the claustrophobic silence of the principal office.

The girl looked up, she had their fathers watch held between her fingers like it was something sacred and her wrist – where it was usually fastened – was bare. Wordlessly, she stood up and slung her backpack over her right shoulder. She didn’t look at Clarke as she walked out.

“Hey,” Clarke followed her, murmuring a _‘thanks’_ to the receptionist, her footfalls too-loud in the empty halls. “Cal, wait.” The girl was ten steps ahead and Clarke could hear anger inherent in the way her feet snapped over black and white, checked marble flooring as she slipped around the corner. Frowning, Clarke stopped. The silence became a thick presence and in the emptiness of the halls it was obvious when Cal had stopped walking, and taken refuge in the alcove beneath the stairwell where Clarke remembered sharing cigarettes with Octavia in her final year of school.

(It was extra rebellious because not only were they smoking, but doing it inside, and it felt good to do _something_ in the wake of the loss of her father.)

“Oh, baby girl,” she sighed.

Cal wasn’t crying, not yet. But she was bouncing on her heels, fingers knitted tight into each other, knuckles whitening with the strength of her own grip. She grimaced, blinking _hard_ , shoulders crumpling like aluminium and fell easily into Clarke, blinking out wordless tears with salt-soaked lashes.

This was about Jake. Of course this was about Jake. It had been three years, but grief knew no bounds and neither did the inexplicable web of emotions that loomed at the forefront of their minds in place of their father, inky and threatening to be all consuming even if they were separated by very different coping mechanisms.

Cal took a heaving breath, Clarke could feel the way she trembled under her hands. “They took Dad’s watch. U-uniform violation. And they said – said they’d give it back tomorrow but I didn’t want – I got mad.” Clarke nodded, she smoothed the girl’s hair through her fingers. “It hurts, Clarke,” she gasped. “I don’t – I can’t –” she sobbed, soft and barely there, “I miss him.” And Clarke nodded – it was such an inarticulate description but somehow, it encapsulated everything.

Two hours later, Clarke was letting them into the house with their father’s watch strapped to her wrist and a promise to keep it safe on her lips. Realistically, she knew it was a quick fix: wear the watch for her sister so Cal wouldn’t get in trouble again but it was a band aid over a gunshot wound and there would always be something else. Truth be told, Clarke wasn’t sure how the girl managed all this time with the weight of it on her wrist, how she managed to keep her seams from splitting until now because the heaviness on the end of her arm was simultaneously a pleasant anchor to reality and a leaden weight pulling her back into the despair that was the first months without her father. She swallowed and tucked her keys into her back pocket, she didn’t need this right now.

Hanging her coat on the hook by the door felt like a redundant gesture. Clarke wasn’t in the mood for feigning smiles and Abby had just gotten off a twenty-six-hour shift at the hospital, so it didn’t seem likely that the item of clothing would stay on the hook for much over five minutes, but she did it, and watched Cal, heard the door slam at the top of the landing.

“Cal?” Abby appeared in the kitchen doorway, hair in a messy bun from her shift, comfy shoes from standing on her feet all day that turned Clarke away from the medical profession full stop. She turned, finding Clarke near the front door. “How is she?”  
“Not that great,” Clarke shrugged. “I took her to the diner for milkshakes to calm down, but…”

Abby pressed her fingertips to her temple as if she were warding off a headache. “I called the school back on the way home, they said she yelled at a teacher?” Clarke nodded in affirmation. “I’m at a loss here, Clarke, she was doing so well for such a long time.”

“They tried to tell her that Dad’s watch wasn’t part of the uniform,” Clarke informed her mother, willing her to understand. “She didn’t take it well.”

“I should call Dr. Russell,” Abby mused, dragging a hand through her hair. “Talk about adjusting her medication.”

There it was.

“I don’t think it’s the medication, Mom, It’s – did you ever think it could be Kane?” If the watch was about Jake, it made sense that something stirred it up, something like having her mother's new boyfriend – Clarke still internally cringed at that word – moving in, taking up the space where their dad had been. It was a suggestion. A reasonable one.

“Clarke!” Abby admonished.

Clarke held her hands up in metaphorical surrender. “She was _off_ that first Friday Night dinner we had – when Kane sat in Dad’s seat. I think something about it is bothering her. “

“You can’t project your feelings onto other people, Clarke, it isn’t fair.”

“Oh,” Clarke scoffed, it was a short, harsh noise that she didn’t think she had control over. Abby seemed surprised at it too. “Right. I’m not being fair again? Of course.”

“Clarke, please, I can’t talk to you about this today, I’m not –”

“Then when, Mom! When are we going to talk about this? Because I can’t handle it anymore. I don’t want to walk into this house and have to talk about the _weather_ because anything else leads to _this!_ It’s not healthy, I can’t keep having the same argument over and over with different words. _Please!”_

“Well, If you wouldn’t instigate things –”

 _“Jesus_ , Mom! If I didn’t, you’d ignore it! It’d be as though it never happened, like Dad, like Cal, like your new _boyfriend_ , like everything else that happens in this _goddamned_ house because apparently, _you don’t have feelings!”_

 _“That’s enough!”_ The resounding silence stretched the width of galaxies. Clarke steeled herself for a comeback, she _wanted_ it. Some perverse part of her understood that pettiness and aggravation was the sole way to pry a reaction from her mother’s stoic exterior, even if said reaction was a slam-down-knock-out screaming match. It would have been something. It would have been better than the long-suffering sigh that dragged out of her lungs like Clarke was the entirety of the problem here. “Just go, Clarke.”

Frustration boiled like hot magma beneath her skin, burning and on the precipice of pain. She shook her head, grounding herself in the feeling of her hair shifting against her shoulders because it was the only way she wasn’t seething. “You’re _infuriating.”_

 

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_  

Home wasn’t an option. Clarke was too restless for four walls and two roommates, she wanted – _needed_ – to not be there. The lab was closer than her apartment anyway.

Becca was there late some nights, in the three weeks Clarke had been with The Woods Corporation she wondered humorously whether the woman slept, and when the blonde stepped out of the elevator at the twenty-first floor and made her way into the lab, she was there.

Clarke was grateful that the woman spared her the small talk and questioning look when she walked in and tore at her jacket, yanking the thing off of herself and feeling like a child in the throes of a temper tantrum about something that was so stupidly insignificant in the eyes of an adult.

“It’s six o’clock,” Becca said.

Clarke hung her jacket on the back of a chair. “I’ll be staying late.”

“Okay.” She shucked off her lab coat and slid the work she had been attending to over the bench to Clarke, gathering her things, and Clarke looked up, alarmed. This was complex, far more so than what Clarke had seen and the prospect of being left to work on it alone without an advisor in the mental state she was in – which was unpredictable and antsy to say the least – was worrying when the outcome of his project was so incredibly crucial to _something_.

Becca eyed the frustration in the set of her shoulders and the way Clarke had to keep shaking her hand out like she was expelling the excess energy she would have used to further the argument with her mother. She looked as if she understood. “Sometimes you need a fresh pair of eyes,” Becca nodded to the binder she gave to Clarke, the calculations and explanations, descriptions of blood molecules binding how they _should_ and question marks in the places where they were going wrong. “And you look like you could use something to take your mind of things.”

She gave Clarke a nod as she exited the lab, told her to switch the lights off when she was done, and Clarke stared at the papers, unmoving, until the words, numbers and diagrams swam in front of her and her back was stiff from leaning over the bench. She shifted. This was all _so_ theoretical, nothing here was tangible and Clarke couldn’t help but understand that things on paper look so appealing until transferred into actuality because actuality is messy. Mapping the human body was as complex and irrational as it was methodical, and Clarke wasn’t in the headspace for fighting with another nonsensical being right now.

She hadn’t eaten since lunch and her stomach was cramping, so she felt along the beach for her phone and googled the nearest takeout place of which Chinese happened to be the closest – two blocks away – who proved to be efficient because within twenty minutes Clarke was in the elevator again, with sweet and sour chicken and egg-fried rice, thinking on the fact that she hadn’t eaten a home cooked meal in four days. She reckoned she should have felt guilty, and then remembered that as a starving – sort of – college student with an unpaid internship, it was her moral obligation to keep the takeaway business in, well, business.

Clarke was on the floor an hour later. She had half a styrofoam takeout container eaten the fork stuck in the remaining half but she wasn’t closer to deciphering the formulae the Becca had left her and each tweak she made resulted in the three-dimensional diagram on the screen of the tablet she was using rejecting the artificial blood molecules. She huffed, a frustrated, displeased sound, that rang back to her through the empty lab, and slammed her index finger into the screen of the tablet, willing a minor-miracle into reality until the system glitched. _“Dammit!”_

“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware anyone was still here.”

 _Lexa._ Clarke swallowed and willed unflattering thoughts out of her head, tugging the collar of her shirt. “I – I can go,” she pushed herself to her knees and gathered her mess.

“No,” Lexa shook her head. Her voice was soft in an unfamiliar way and Clarke paused, fingers lingering at her stack of papers, to push hair out of her eyes. “You’re fine. I just…came to check on progress.” Clarke nodded. This was the first time Lexa had spoken to Clarke since Clarke had collided with her at the cafe and it seemed she remembered the encounter – contrary to what the blonde had thought – but she wasn’t the same Lexa Clarke had met that day. In heels, tailored black slacks and a white, button-down blouse with the sleeves rolled up and the top three buttons loose, having forgone the pressed blazer of the morning’s board meeting, this Lexa was softer, sadder. Less like the Lexa Woods who commands her boardroom and more like the girl who sat in their weekly briefings with deflated shoulders and tragedy in her eyes.

Clarke was still kneeling on the floor when Lexa took a step closer, her heels clicking against the linoleum. “Why are you here, Clarke?” It wasn’t impolite but Lexa caught herself. “If I may ask?”

“You may,” Clarke teased, “I’m hiding.”

“Ah,” Lexa nodded, seemingly in understanding – Clarke wondered what she would have to hide from and why the empathy for her situation seemed to be etched into the expression on her face, into the softness of her eyes – “can I join you?”

Clarke centralised her mess and nodded in the affirmative, watching Lexa slide to the floor with her, back against the cupboards under the bench so that she could pull her knees loosely to her chest, and the hem of her slacks rode up her ankle. The collar of her shirt shifted, exposing her collarbone and Clarke looked down, cheeks heating uselessly. She flipped the paper in her hands with deft fingers and clicked her pen softly, pressing the tip to the blank side of the page in short, subtle movements, tracing the cut of Lexa’s jaw, and the slope of her nose. Octavia called it her nervous tick, something that Clarke did when she was unsure where to put her hands, or how to approach a situation – she had handed in her last finals paper with a ballpoint rendition of Gapstow Bridge in Central Park on the back.

“Hiding from what?”

Clarke looked up, “hm?”

“You said you were hiding,” the brunette reminded her softly, “what are you hiding from? If you don’t mind my asking.”

In thinking over the ramifications of lumping her insignificant problems onto her boss – her _crush_ , there, she said it – Clarke wondered if everything that Lexa said was well-mannered and polite. “It’s – it’s my Mom,” she admitted, removing her pen from the paper and staring at the rough outline of the women sitting across from her in soft, inky lines. “We don’t exactly have the healthiest relationship,” she shook her head, “doesn’t make for great mother-daughter moments.”

“I’m sorry,” Lexa murmured.

Clarke shrugged. “It’s fine…what about you?”

“Me?”

“You asked to join me,” Clarke said, “what are _you_ hiding from?” Clarke was feeling brazen but she wasn’t sure if Lexa would respond – the brunette had her lips purse and her arms over her chest, and she appraised her companion like she would appraise an associate across the boardroom table. “Things lately…haven’t been going the way I had planned them to,” was her careful, curated answer, like she had waited for the go-ahead to release a statement to the media, “and I’m not doing well with it.”

Clarke smiled, stained with sadness. She thought of the way it felt to lay her ear on her Dad’s chest as he told her stories when she was young and clad in _‘Strawberry Shortcake’_ pyjamas that were a size too big because she liked the way the sleeves hung low and her Mom didn’t want her growing out of them too early. She thought of when Cal was ten, and she wasn’t upset, and she smiled when Clarke smudged icing on her face from the cake they had on the Fourth of July. She thought of her Mom, and the times when she would come home from a late-shift to find Clarke on the couch, not asleep but halfway there, not in bed because she wanted her kiss goodnight.

The watch was heavy on Clarke's wrist and she smoothed the leather strap through her fingers. It was dredging up unwanted memories like it wanted to submerge her in them and she didn’t want it. She shrugged, “when do they?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can promise it's mostly uninterrupted Clexa interactions from here on out so get ready. Thanks for reading :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa continue their heart-to-heart. Titus worries about a potential threat to the company and sours Lexa’s mood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay, I had to re-write this a couple of times because I wanted it to flow right considering this is a pretty big chapter for Clarke and Lexa's relationship developing. Exams are finished so hopefully the next chapter won't be long (unless I get distracted writing Clexa Christmas one-shots, I'll try not to, but I'm making no promises). Hope you enjoy!

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_  

“What’s your favourite colour?”

Lexa looked up. “Pardon?”

It had turned dusky outside. Silence had been their unwavering companion for the better part of twenty minutes and Clarke was getting antsy – not in the mood for pleasantries and giving space, or to linger on unsavoury memories. “Your favourite colour,” Clarke repeated. “What is it?” It was evident neither of them were in a hurry to leave this sanctuary they had found, safe from turbulent waters that were unknown to each other but difficult to navigate nonetheless. A question for a question – a conversation that could remain trivial and meaningless if need be – seemed like the easiest way to fill the quiet.

It took longer than Clarke had anticipated for Lexa answer, and when she did it was hesitant and stilted. “Red.”

Clarke nodded, affirming it to herself. The answer hadn’t come with an explanation but it felt fitting and the protectiveness begin to leach out of Lexa’s body, she saw it in the way her knees started to fall away from where they were pressed tight to her chest. “Your turn,” she told the brunette.

“What?”

“Ask me a question.”

Lexa pursed her lips. For a beat Clarke didn’t think she was going to reply – as though something as menial wasn’t worth her time – but she relented with the unoriginal reply of “what’s _your_ favourite colour.”

Taking her time to draw the finer strands of Lexa’s hair into her sketch, Clarke thought about it. “Cerulean,” she decided.

Lexa looked at her, intrigued. “That’s awfully specific.”

“My Dad used to say It was the colour of my eyes.”

“Used to?”

Clarke swallowed, pen hovering over the detailing of Lexa’s eyes. “He’s…not around – anymore,” she wouldn’t burden Lexa with the specifics, she wouldn’t be the cause of that _look_ in her eyes.

“Oh,” the brunette deflated, ducking her head and the gesture _hurt_ , it made something come unstuck in Clarke’s chest. Lexa’s, _‘I’m sorry,’_ was small.

“Stop being sorry,” Clarke chastised brightly – too brightly – she continued onto the collar of Lexa’s button-up with her pen. “Ok, _my_ turn. Favourite…season?”

“Winter. You? _”_ Lexa was sticking to impersonal questions and generic answers Clarke couldn’t help but notice, but she wasn’t surprised.

“Spring,” the blonde answered, “new beginnings. Favourite book?”

“ _'Great Expectations'_.”

“Dickens?” Clarke nodded in respected, “the closest I got to the classics was reading _‘Too Kill A Mockingbird’_ in high school. Although in my opinion, _‘Harry Potter’_ is definitely a classic and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.”

“It’s good to stick to one's beliefs,” Lexa agreed, ducking her head. “And I’m guessing your favourite book is –”

“ _'Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban'_ ,” Clarke confirmed. She tapped the end of her pen against her paper, thinking, watching the way Lexa had her bottom lip snagged between her teeth, stopping herself from smiling. Clarke wished she _would_ smile, if only so that she could capture an accurate likeness on paper and not because it made the hot frustration inside her melt into something soft and malleable and easier to handle.

“Favourite movie quote?”

Lexa released her bottom lip like she didn’t need to contemplate her answer. “ _‘This is my one and only life’_ ,” she recounted softly, “ _‘and it’s a great and terrible and short and endless thing –”_

“‘ _– and none of us come out of it alive’_ ,” Clarke finished. “ _‘P.S. I Love You?’_ Really? _”_

“What?” There was the smile – small but there and Clarke outlined the minute quirk of lips on her paper in hasty strokes of her pen.

“Oh, nothing,” Clarke shook her head, “I just…didn’t take you for a romantic comedy kind of girl.”  

“What can I say Clarke,” she clicked the _‘k’ again,_ and Clarke melted. “I’m a woman of mystery.”

Clarke nodded and lowered her eyes, shading in the shadows of Lexa’s face in the easy silence.

“I’m not,” the the admission came a beat later, “a romantic comedy kind of girl.” The words felt weighted, wrenched out of her mouth from a place, deep in her chest, where she held onto them, so tight and so dear, for a draining amount of time. But she wasn’t providing any more of an explanation, so Clarke didn't ask, and a minute later, Lexa spoke again. “Have you always wanted to go into medicine?” It was a tentative question – a step away from the classic ice-breaker _‘what’s your favourite’_ they had been sticking to, but she had recalled Clarke’s transcripts and was curious.

Clarke grinned. “Well, when I was four I wanted to be a princess.” Lexa laughed softly, but she caught herself like she did in the TED talk Clarke had watched, like it was something bad. Clarke wanted to make her laugh again. “And then, when I was six, I wanted to be an astronaut. We went camping that year, upstate, and my Dad taught me about the stars. We’d sit outside the tent at night and he’d point out constellations and planets.”

“He sounds wonderful.”

“He was,” Clarke smiled, her fingers paused on the drawing for a moment, tracing the face of the watch on her wrist, she looked back up at Lexa, “he was an aerospace engineer.”

Lexa nodded, “high achieving parent earns a high achieving daughter.” At Clarke’s questioning look, Lexa pinned her with an expression that seemed to say _‘please’_. “I’ve seen your transcripts, Clarke,” she explained. “I hired you for this project for a reason. You’ll be an excellent doctor.”

“Oh,” Clarke could feel the flush seeping up the column of her neck, warm and fizzing like champagne bubbles, “thank you, but it was my Mom who pushed me into medicine. She’s head of neurology at New York-Arkadia –” She watched Lexa tense, imperceptibly, the tautness back in the set of her shoulders and in the tendons of her neck. But only for a heartbeat, because then it was gone she was soothing it out of herself. Clarke grappled to right the conversation; they had reached an easiness between them that she was reluctant to ruin and her change of topic was dizzying. “Favourite food?”

Lexa picked it up graciously, lips bearing a small smile, a wordless _‘thank you’_ , for what, Clarke wasn’t sure. “Not Chinese food,” she gestured to the cooling takeout container Clarke had been picking forkfuls from.

The blonde made a face of faux-shock and indignation. “What?” She balked, clasping a hand to her chest, and declared, “sacrilege! Chinese food is a staple. What? Are you too good for it?”

“I prefer Italian,” Lexa informed her sweetly. “A good carbonara is my weakness.” She danced her fingers along the collar of her shirt, thinking, watching Clarke cradle her takeout container close like it had been offended. “Favourite song?”

Clarke pondered that for a moment, replacing her food for her pen and absently defining lines and on her sketch, then she laughed – _giggled_ – loud and sing-song. “Sk8ter Boi, Avril Lavigne,” she said, a vain attempt not to giggle again when faced with Lexa’s comical reaction of disdain that was shoddily masked. “My best friend, Octavia,” Clarke started explaining, “her parents were – are – useless. They’d send her to summer camp over vacation when we were kids so they could have _‘them time’_ ,” she emphasised with air quotes, “and my Mom decided it’d be good for my sister and I too, so we went. And it was this place up in the Adirondacks, where we wore uniforms and played tennis and went jet-skiing.” Clarke shook her head, smiling, “It was _the_ most _pretentious_ thing I’ve seen, but it was one of the best summers I’ve ever had. In our free time, we’d sit outside our cabin and blast Avril Lavigne through Octavia’s old iPod because it was the only electronics they didn’t take away from us, and we sang so loud that the boys camp across the lake would complain about the noise. Octavia's brother refused to aknowledge us for a month when we got back to New York.”

Lexa was looking at her like she didn’t understand, like a group of teenage girls whose parents had too much money on their hands running around in white tennis dresses wasn’t something she could comprehend.

“Oh, don’t tell me Miss I-Read-Dickens-And-Wear-Silk-Button-Downs doesn’t have any pretentious summer camp stories?” Clarke challenged. They had fallen into an easy rhythm and it was the type of thing she would have said to call Octavia or Raven out. It shouldn’t have been meant for Lexa because what they had in this moment was tenuous and slight, a trance that was easily breakable and one Clarke found she didn't want to break, because this – seeing Lexa with her collar loose, and her sleeves rolled up, and quiet easiness about her – felt like a privilege few were privy to. She wanted to kick herself as she watched the stoicity slide over Lexa’s face.

The CEO pursed her lips. “Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Clarke.”

“I’m sorry,” Clarke agreed, “It wasn’t my place.” She didn’t know why it wasn’t, but Lexa was looking at her in a way she couldn’t quite decipher – tilted chin and body language withdrawn – and Clarke scratched the tip of her pen onto the sheet of paper with a force that had it threatening to shred. Unsure of how to proceed, she left the decision to Lexa.

“What are you doing?”

Clarke paused. She tilted the paper so that Lexa could see, then decided against it and held the ballpoint sketch to the brunette with an outstretched hand. An olive branch. “I take Studio Arts as a minor,” she let out a mirthless chuckle, “much to my mother's disappointment."

Watching Lexa trace the outline of herself, rendered in paper and inky pen on the back of lined refill paper, Clarke was caught off guard with the delicacy of the girl’s touch, the way her lips – dusky pink and soft – parted and her sculpted eyebrows raised. Clarke wasn’t sure if the reaction was good or bad and self-consciousness crept up her spine.  
“This is…brilliant, Clarke.”

They were back to careful, curated answers. The sheer effort it must have taken to keep this facade of Lexa’s up was monumental – this holding people at arm's length and nudging them unceremoniously back when they edge too close. Clarke wondered what she was protecting because there was something too calculated, too careful, for it to simply be herself.  

When Lexa tilted her head forwards, appraising the sketch, tendrils of hair fell past her ears and the Clarke felt to press her lips against the brunette’s, soft and sweet, was overwhelming and unprecedented, a euphoric kind of head rush that sent everything spinning and she swallowed promptly, blinked it away, tried not to think of the way their fingers brushed when Lexa offered the drawing back and Clarke took it. “Thanks.” She cursed how weak her voice sounded leaving her lips and pressed them together again. Lexa noticed.

“It’s late,” she said, like they weren’t aware. The blonde watched her raise herself to her feet, dusting non-existent dirt off her slacks, combing a hand through her hair, neatening it because god forbid the slightest undoing. She looked at Clarke, cross-legged on the floor, jeans and a sweater, not planning on coming into the lab today – just wanting somewhere to run to – hair falling loose from her messy bun, holding the sketch between her hands like it was something sacrosanct. “You should go home Clarke.”

 

**_LEXA’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

A week later, it was nearing the end of March but winter reminded stark and ingrained – the kind of permeating chill that choked the air out of lungs and turned puffs of breath into a tangible, visible presence. Lexa knew it would drop off into the promising warmth of Spring by April, but for now, her toes curled against the cold hardwood floors of her kitchen as she traipsed her apartment at six-thirty in the morning on a search for coffee, sweater brushing the tops of her thighs.

She hooked a mug under the espresso machine, warming her hands on the ceramic, waiting for it to leach into her and soak up some of the bone-tiredness that sat there, ears tuning into the thrum and trickle of coffee against the bottom of her mug.

She listened because the quiet was dangerous. It made her think.

She wondered what Costia would do if she saw her now? How she would react to Lexa’s caffeine intake, or the grey under her eyes – expertly and religiously concealed each morning – or the way her curtains hadn’t been opened in over two weeks because Lexa left in the dark and came home in the dark, an infinite circle of work, home, the hospital, work?

She stopped thinking about it when the thought began to hurt – stinging deep in her chest – filing it away with thoughts of its kin, the ones she preferred not to let take root in her head because they threatened to turn into something dark and less…manageable.  

She yawned. Her weekend had been spent at the hospital, at Costia’s side, monitoring breaths like each would be her last and expelling the thought of cerulean eyes from her mind like it was a sin.

She hadn’t spoken to Clarke since Thursday. Had she stayed late in the lab the day after, she would have seen Clarke there, just on the off chance, winding pasta from her takeout container around her plastic fork and scouring their non-existent progress. But Lexa’s Friday had been filled with unavoidable meetings with an incorrigible board, so she hadn’t.

Light eked through the crack in the curtains, faint and dove-grey, and coffee frothed at the rim of the mug. Tangling fingers into the handle, Lexa padded back down the hall to her bedroom, sipping at the too-hot drink, then slipped into her work attire, turning the collar of her coat up when she realised it was time to go, and nosing into her plaid Burberry scarf.

She left the apartment with a half-filled coffee cup on the kitchen island and the curtains closed.

Gustus was waiting for her downstairs, car idling. He bid her a _‘good morning’_ as she slipped into the backseat and dropped her off two blocks from The Woods Corporation with a knowing smile as she nodded her _‘have a good day’_ and stepped onto the curb.

The warmth that welcomed her inside Grounders was heavenly, and there wasn’t a line this early in the morning, so Lexa walked up to the counter and handed over her card, smiling at the barista with a familiar face who knew her order, which she received a minute later with a gracious _‘thank you.’_

Turning from the counter, she appraised the cafe – people-less and glowing in the dreariness of the winter morning. Her watch told her that she needed to get into the office, the stack of work on the desk wasn’t in the habit of resolving itself and it would have to if she wanted any semblance of time to sink into work at the lab. Her body told her to stay in the relative sanctuary of the cafe, to sink herself into one of the booths close to the counter where it smelt like coffee and pastries. Both were answered when her name was spoken from a table squeezed into the corner, by a blonde swallowed by a chunky knit scarf.

Ignoring the feeling in her chest, the tight, hot ache she wasn’t sure the meaning of yet – whether it was a cautioned warning, a telling off, or an option she wouldn't consider – Lexa weaved between tables, hesitancy in her step. “Good morning, Clarke.”

“It’s early,” the blonde replied in lieu of a greeting.

Lexa considered. She would have been inclined to agree, it wasn’t past seven, but the CEO’s _‘to-do’_ list was in-numerous and insatiable, especially with her intent of pouring as much of her own personal time into aiding the project – her project – as possible.

“Join me?” Clarke asked, echoing her words from the week prior. Her smile was warm, and Lexa’s office would be cold.

“I –” Lexa  nodded, “okay.” She set her coffee on the table and slid into the chair opposite the blonde, unwinding her scarf from her neck, setting her purse at her feet. There was pale lipstick staining the white lid of Clarke’s takeout coffee cup and pen squiggles on her napkin, components of a drawing Lexa thought she recognised and wished she didn’t – the slope of a brow, the quirk of lips – Clarke flipped the napkin with deft fingers and Lexa swallowed.

“How was your weekend?” She asked after a moment of silence, popping the lid of her coffee and wishing she had grabbed a pastry as her empty stomach complained. She resolved to ask Harper to get her breakfast when she got into the office. “Did you resolve things with your mother?”

Clarke looked surprised she remembered, and Lexa wondered if she exuded an air saying that she didn’t care about anything matters not regarding herself of it it was another assumption. “I don’t think things will ever be resolved with my mother,” the blonde replied, shaking her head. “In fact, I probably made it worse by skipping her family dinner on Friday.”

Lexa winced in sympathy. “Parents can be difficult.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience?”

“Somewhat.”

The CEO swilled the coffee in her cup, not in the business of divulging her past easily.

They continued with small talk, and trivial conversation like what they had shared the week before in the lab, not straying into matters of any consequence, mostly because Lexa found she liked it. What her and Clarke had – which wasn’t anything, they didn’t _have_ anything and she shouldn’t have to remind herself of that – wasn’t bound by prerequisites or responsibilities. It wasn’t a business transaction, she wasn’t required to give and Clarke didn’t want to take. Lexa felt the tension leach out of her shoulders at the realisation and it was because of this that the reminder that sounded on her phone, forcing her to face the reality of going into the office, was unwelcome at the least.

“I’m almost done here,” Clarke shook her cup, the remaining liquid sloshing, and brought it to her lips to drain the dregs of her coffee, “if you want to head into work?”

 _I don’t_. “Sure.” She watched the way Clarke gathered her things, subtle fingers slipping the napkin into her coat pocket, leaving her now-empty coffee cup on the table. Taking the blonde's lead, Lexa rose to her feet with her own unfinished beverage pressed tight between her palms, an effort to increase circulation in her extremities as they prepared to brave the outside.

Clarke called a light _‘thank you’_ to the barista and pulled the glass door open for Lexa, and the brunette ducked her head and slipped out of the warmth to feel the cold threatening to chap her cheeks and numb her fingers. The two blocks between here and the office stretched out, glacial and freezing, but five minutes of trekking through the cold wasn’t worth calling Gustus back, not that the man wouldn’t be gracious and agreeable if he had to pick them up, but she was sure Clarke would tease her like she had with the Chinese food and though charming, Lexa didn’t want the _‘what, are you too good for walking one and a half blocks?’_ So, she exhaled, watching her breath freeze, and walked.

“You look very doom and gloom.”

Lexa nodded as Clarke fell into step with her. “The weekend was trying,” she admitted. She found her hands fisted in the pockets of her coat, attempting to draw the heavy material around herself to eek out the warmth it held.

“It must be difficult.”

“Hm?”

“Running a company – at your age.”

“Oh. Yes. It’s…taxing.” She said nothing of the fact that Clarke knew her age. She didn’t think it had come up during their game in the lab the week before. “More so keeping the board off the warpath than the actual running itself.”

She listened to Clarke laugh, saw her breath plume in front of her face, and felt her chest tighten with an ache that was induced by more than the chilly air, wishing it away only because the guilt the knotted in her stomach at the realisation had the potential to hurt more.

“Have you always wanted to do it?”

“What?” Lexa clarified, “run a company?” The blonde nodded and Lexa considered. “Not exactly,” she shook her head. “But I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I’m stubborn. It came as more a result of being told I couldn’t than out of an interest in leadership. I wasn’t exactly Student Body President in high school.”

 _“No,”_ Clarke teased in faux-shock. Lexa ducked her head and bumped the blonde with her elbow. Not hard, but enough to nudge her into the path of a suit-clad professional walking in the other direction, the inadvertent, spur of the moment contact leaving them both temporarily stunned. Lexa swallowed. She drew her coat around herself like it added a second layer of protection – restriction – to herself, a barrier between her and Clarke lest she do something like that again. Clarke murmured and apologetic _‘sorry’_ to man who patted dirt that wasn’t there off his dry-clean-only suit jacket, _tsking_ to Clarke who bit down a smitten sort of smile that Lexa refused to acknowledge highlighted her features in the best way possible. She wondered if Clarke understood the weight of the situation, how the things that she was making Lexa feel were _bad_ , a betrayal of a magnitude that the brunette herself couldn’t face – but of course she didn’t. Like Lexa had thought before, she didn’t _owe_ Clarke anything and perhaps that was made this so intriguing? Lexa shook her head, she didn’t know. One thing hadn’t been differentiable from the other since the accident and she tricked herself into thinking she was coping when all she was doing was managing. But Clarke was smiling at her, like she had done something monumental – like a purposeful touch, inadvertent as it might have been, was something so she smiled back.

They walked the remaining half a block in an amicable silence and parted when the elevator doors opened to let Clarke out on the twenty-first floor, reluctance in her movement as she exited giving her usual goodbye – the brief, one-handed curl of her fingers and release – and strolled down the hall towards the lab. Lexa watched her shake her wheat-blonde hair free of her coat collar she walked, freeing herself from the confines of her heavy scarf.

Ten floors later, Lexa exited the elevator with the semblance of a smile on her lips and elation in fizzling through her veins despite her inability to fully understand the situation.

Miss Woods, are you able to spare a moment?”

She deflated, levelling her gaze at the bald-headed man who blocked the path to her office. “Titus,” she tried, warning in her voice as she unwound her scarf from her neck and prised the buttons of her coat open with defrosting fingers.

“It’s urgent.”

Lexa sighed. It was never _not_ urgent with Titus – he seemed to walk the floors of The Woods Corporation in a permanent state of stress and she was sure that if someone were to put pressure on him he would snap wholly and completely. But he was insistent today, she wasn’t in the mood to deal with his hovering and for brevity’s sake, she nodded and allowed him to guide her to the nearest conference room, desolate and blinds shuttered. He pulled the door to after her and she trailed her manicure across the veneer surface of the conference room table.

Titus didn’t speak.

“Well?”

“There are whispers, Lexa.”

Lexa sat back on her heels. “There are always whispers,” she informed the man, humourless smirk tugging at her lips – the kind of cold smile she would aim across the boardroom – “If that’s all you pulled me aside to say, Titus, then I’m sorry but I have work to do,” she brushed past him to the door, “I’ll leave you to your whispers.”

“Please be serious, Lexa,” the man scolded. Lexa frowned. “The investors are concerned as to where your focus has been of late –”

“They’re _always_ concerned –”

“There are rumours, Lexa,” Titus insisted, “that you do not in fact have the company’s best interests in your sights.” He composed himself and pressed his hands into each other, folding himself into the picture of sympathy and sorrow. “Lexa, I know how much Costia meant to you, but you must be rational here, it wouldn't do to –”

 _“Titus,”_ Lexa sniped, on edge. She didn’t like where this was going. “We’ve been over this. I will _not_ hear it again –”

_“Yes, you will!”_

Lexa straightened, everything within her wound tight, jaw working.

“Your _feelings_ put you – and the company – in danger, Lexa,” he informed her, “Nia knows.”

Eyes snapping to his, Lexa worked her jaw again. “How?” Her work hadn’t exactly been public knowledge. Unlike the other technological advances her company had made in its field in the past two years, she hadn’t been promoting this project, no one should have known about Costia aside from the necessary people – the hospital staff, her board of directors. Lexa decided whom she deemed worthy enough to divulge the information to and Nia Queen, CEO of her rival company and all-round-unlikeable-person, was _not_ worthy.

Titus shrugged. It was a short, sharp, aggressive movement that tugged the hem of his suit jacket up. “I don’t know, but you know Nia – she has influence. She already thinks that you are too young to be in sole charge of this company and if she so desires, it wouldn’t be out of her powers to stage a takeover. You must be careful. We cannot have you putting all of your efforts into your project and leaving other areas of the company wanting. It is imperative we keep moving, you cannot let your personal feelings get in the way of professional matters.”

Lexa blinked at him. “Personal feelings?” She snarled. “Titus, for the past two years, I have maintained this company – alone – while my fiancée lay comatose in a hospital bed.” The man nodded and ducked his head, aware of his mistake but Lexa could feel the aggravation rising within her, boiling into something hot and angry. “Nothing I have done in that time has in any way impaired the advances of it, or its employees. I am more than _capable_ of separating my _feelings_ from _duty!”_ The words hung quiet in the of the conference room, empty of bodies but thick with tension. Titus lowered his eyes and Lexa found his meekness irrationally infuriating. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

“Yes, you did,” she corrected, an accusation with little weight because fighting with Titus was pointless. “I know you mean well, Titus, but contrary to your belief, the successful production of the bio stimulant will put The Woods Corporation miles in front of our competitors, Nia wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on us.” She swallowed, unsure whether her attempt was in order to convince Titus or reassure herself.

“Lexa, please –”

The CEO steeled herself, jaw working, “I know where you stand Titus,” she sniped. “Now, If you excuse me, I really do have work to do.” 

 

**_STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CA_ **

_FOUR YEARS AGO_  

_The Dean Of Students’ office was a place Lexa imagined to be ingrained with the panic of students begging to be passed on their too-low GPA’s, but not somewhere she was accustomed to being. Self-sufficient from a young age – a necessity not a choice, and something she wasn’t sure whether she resented when she saw fresh-faced freshman wandering the halls in a daze because they couldn’t work the washing machines in the basement of the dorms – Lexa wasn’t in the habit of burdening the man with personal issues, numerous as hers may be. Anya had a hard enough time getting her to open up as a tight-lipped eighteen year old who had a polaroid of her high school girlfriend in wallet because her phone was too old and too broken to allow her to set it as her lock screen._

_But she found herself staring smouldering holes into dark wood interior of the Dean of Students’ office four years later regardless, uncomfortable, feet planted, ramrod straight and outrage simmering as she stared at the letter spread out on the desk, the creases from where it had been folded smoothed out when the man had placed it with care on the desk, a care that Lexa couldn’t reciprocate because she would rather the letter disintegrate on sight._

_“Disciplinary probation?” she growled, the words curdling on her tongue._

_The man nodded, sifting a hand through high greying hairline – Lexa was a student notorious for being difficult to handle when she had to be handled, Thanksgiving's incident had cemented the further. “I’m afraid so,” he confirmed, sounding genuinely sorry, but she wouldn't dwell on that. “What you did was unacceptable, Miss Woods, it won’t go unpunished and my hands are tied. You’ll be barred from attending classes for a month, and from sitting your finals.”_

_“Sir,” Lexa ensured her words came out short and measured, could feel the annoyance coiled hot in her spine, along with the less volatile knowledge that what she had done was inherently wrong, but an action that she had no choice but to carry out if they were going to bar her from progress at every turn. “With all due respect, if I don’t sit finals, I can’t pass the year.”_

_The man softened, “I’m sorry, Lexa. There’s nothing I can do; the decision has been made.”_

_Lexa pursed her lips and stood, the abruptness of her movement sending her chair skidding an inch out from under her over the hardwood flooring. “Thank you for your time,” she snatched the letter from the desk and the paper crumpled under the involuntary force of her fingers – annoyance masking anger masking fear that she wouldn’t address – and chose not to look at the micro-expression of mild shock on the dean’s face. Maybe, she thought, he was preparing himself for a lengthier crusade. But she found it difficult to keep up the pretence of petty annoyance when she felt like the world had tilted on its axis and was dragging stability from beneath her – again. A nauseous feeling, she was sure she had left in Los Angeles when she was freed from the foster system. And it was so infuriatingly unfair that she wanted to deliver an open-handed smack to the armrest of her chair, or scream at the world that was so intent on beating the hope of bettering herself out of her, send her back to the shoddy cafe with the crack in the wall by the door to wait tables, like her earliest foster father had drilled into her would be her life – a life she didn’t accept and a decision she got reprimanded for at each turn so it seemed._

_The dean was looking at her with big eyes and a sorrowful expression in the slight downwards tilt of his chin and Lexa fled the office before he could distinguish the shake in her fingers._

_November leached into mid-December outside and it was cold. Not the choking, numbing cold Costia described feeling in New York when she visited her Grandparents on the better side of Central Park every other Christmas – California being the twilight zone of extremes where lows never got low but highs were high. But Lexa could feel the chill seep like dread into her bones as she walked. Pathetic fallacy she thought; the greying skies were taunting her._

_Halfway across the quad, a hand connected with her shoulder and the breath that rattled out of her in response was shuttered and unsteady._

_“Woah, kid,” a familiar voice drawled, “where’s the fire?”_

_Anya – all pressed and proper because she was a TA now, light cable knit sweater over her button down, dirty blonde hair suitably stylish with minimal effort and a knack for appearing whenever Lexa was distressed – read and understood the look on her mentee’s face quickly and was guiding her with a firm hand on her elbow a second later._

_“You’re panicking,” Anya told more than asked when they found themselves in the dining hall, she pressed a watery cup of coffee into Lexa’s hands and guided her to a table, settling herself opposite the brunette who stared into her beverage like she was divining tea leaves, a desperate, grasping attempt to ensure her future. Trembling fingers – out of fear or anger, Anya wouldn’t differentiate – slid the letter over the veneer surface of the table and Anya took it, eyes playing a ping-pong match between Lexa and her verdict, printed in twelve-point font on Stanford letterhead, signed and sealed._

_If she hadn’t mentored this unassuming, glasses-wearing, innately stubborn girl through her four years of undergrad, Anya would have been tempted to say that she deserved what she had been given – Lexa had done some pig-headed things through the years, chiefly in the academic field, but this took the cake. Even now, the older girl would see Lexa pause sometimes, mid task, to rub a headache out of her temples that hadn’t seemed to plague her before she shoved a prototype bio stimulant in her spine. But Lexa’s eyes were reddening so she folded she letter and set it aside, demeanour calm._

_“I’m going to fail the year,” Lexa muttered._

_“Could you ask your professors for extra credit? You’re a good student, Lexa, I’m sure they would help you where they can.”_

_“I’m going to fail.”_

_“So, you’ll do it again."_

_“I don’t want to.”_

_“Well,” Anya demanded, firm but calm, “what do you want to do? Help me out here.”_

_Lexa shook her head, the movement ticked in the muscles of her jaw, contemplating and deciding. “I don’t want to be here.”_

_Anya softened – Lexa saw it. How it started in the way the muscles in her hands loosened and her chin tipped downwards, not in pity – never pity – but something akin to understanding, empathy that she was capable of exuding when she needed to, then retract when the moment was over lest she be accused of caring. She was a paradox like that; the dichotomy of Anya Frey._

_“Where_ do _you want to be?”_


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia walks Clarke to work and meets Lincoln in the lobby of The Woods Corporation. Tensions run high in the lab as Lexa’s hope begins to wear thin and invitations to the company’s spring gala go out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not really sure about this chapter, it's more of a filler but it's necessary so I hope it's still okay. The next one will be way better I promise :)

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

“You’re smitten.”

“‘M not.”

“Are _too_ ,” Octavia insisted. “You’ve got _heart-eyes_.” She was all smug smile and lazy movements, waving her phone in front of the blonde’s nose with little-to-no coordination, a jumble of limbs and infuriating glee – Clarke would accuse her of downing too many tequila shots if it weren’t seven-thirty and she hadn’t had to drag a grumpy, morning Octavia out of bed twenty minutes earlier.

She took a swing to the brunette’s arm, good-natured and teasing, and Octavia stumbled.  

“The only eyes I have are annoyed-eyes. At you. For making me late.”    

“You promised to get coffee with me before work,” Octavia replied, fingers swiping and dipping across her phone screen, she thrust it into Clarke’s face again and the blonde had to make an active effort to ensure her heartbeat didn’t stutter and her cheeks didn’t flush at the sight of a recent picture on Lexa’s Instagram – the brunette at a corporate event sipping champagne, hair half-up, half-down, wearing an elegant white wrap dress and pricey looking heels. The hot feeling that collided with her chest and shattered into the slots of her ribs was dizzying, but it had grown concerningly familiar to her of late, was the same feeling that had her craning her neck around Grounders as Octavia ordered, straining for a sign of Lexa even though it was fifteen minutes later than when the CEO would be there and Clarke knew for a fact she was late.

Coffee with Lexa had become an unofficial part of her – their – routine, an early morning alternate reality fabricated of trivial things and matters of little-to-no consequence: the way the days were warming, how it was becoming too hot for a coat but too cold not to wear one.

“I promised to get coffee with you _if_ you got up on time, which – evidently – you did _not_. Because we’re late.”

Clarke tried not to think of what Lexa had thought at quarter-past-seven that morning when the blonde wasn’t there, hadn’t been tucked into the table by the windows for the past half-hour with a steadily cooling latte on the off chance the CEO would see her again. Would join her again. She willed herself not to wonder if Lexa felt the same uncomfortable sting of disappointment Clarke had when she realised Octavia had slept through her second alarm. And she refused to consider what that sting of disappointment would morph into on the possible realisation that, maybe, Lexa hadn’t thought of her at all.

Octavia hummed, nonchalant, and sipped her coffee, her tiny stature enabling her to duck under Clarke’s arm as the blonde held the door to The Woods Corporation open with a smug little _‘thank you’._ But four steps into the foyer of the building – all clean lines and muted tones, impersonal and professional, like Lexa at a first glance – she stopped, digging the heels of her chelsea boots into the ground so that Clarke could collide with her back, emitting a disgruntled huff.

_“O!”_

“Hm? Oh,” she eyed the way the milky dregs of her latte had splashed the cuff of Clarke’s sleeve and made an apologetic face, schooling her features with the proficiency of the girl who was so awful at keeping a straight face that the whole school knew about her crush on Andrew “Atom” Kelly within two days in freshman year – which was to say, not well. Clarke traced her eye line to a throng of suit-clad men, tall and broad-shouldered and ear piece wearing, specifically the one who was standing side-on to them, all tanned skin, stubble and buzz cut, twice Octavia’s stature and a head taller.

_Ah._

He was familiar, Clarke thought on further inspection, she had seen him milling around the foyer of the building on a regular basis – probably a security guard – and though Clarke’s personal taste didn’t extend to the likes of him, she couldn’t dispute the aesthetic appeal, he had the stoic, brown eyed, older-guy thing going for him that she knew for a fact would work on Octavia. The girl who got through high school making up for her lack of height with superb taste in senior boys much to her older brothers worry.

“You should go talk to him.”

Octavia looked affronted. “Sorry, what?”  
“Tall, dark and handsome over there,” Clarke nodded in the man’s general direction, there was nothing about the conversation they were having that was surreptitious, but Clarke figured if he hadn’t seen Octavia gaping by now he wouldn’t notice. “You’re staring.”

_“Am not.”_

“Now who’s smitten?”

Octavia _‘hmpf’_ ed and disposed of her empty coffee cup, “don’t you have work to get to? You’re late, remember?”

Clarke checked her watch – her father’s watch, which reminded her she needed to return her mother’s voice mails, numerous and daunting as the thought was, and go over to check on Cal because her pride and petty stubbornness and been the obstacle barring her from attending Friday Night Dinners for the past few weeks and she was, for sure, a dead girl walking. But she acquiesced, Octavia was right. “We’re not finished with this,” she warned as she was hugging the girl goodbye and asking her to stop by her biology professor during office hours to pick up lesson plans that she had been missing. Octavia nodded in the affirmative, but Clarke’s back was to the broad-shouldered security guard and she could see the way Octavia’s eyes were focused on her right ear, just over her shoulder, tracking the little movements the man made as he listened to his colleagues, the way his muscles flexed and moved under his suit that stretched across his back in the right way, sending a weak melty feeling to her knees. Clarke would tease the girl about her own heart-eyes, about being the most obvious thing since the pre-pubescent boys who would flirt with them in the middle school hallways but she didn’t think Octavia would pull punches when it came to herself and Lexa either.

(Not that there was a _‘herself and Lexa’_. Not yet. Not ever. She was beginning to think she wanted there to be, but the years since her father died had her discerning the difference between want she wanted and what would happen as two things, both mutually exclusive. She wanted her Dad back, she wanted her mother to get off her ass about med school and art and Kane, but Jake _happened_ to be gone and Abby _happened not_ to have found a sufficient coping mechanism other than her late-husband's best friend and nagging her eldest daughter. Actuality and fantasy were tricky and Clarke had always struggled with matters of philosophy. Biology was tangible in a way existentialism was not.)

It was better to stay ambiguous – whether towards her feelings for Lexa or how obvious Octavia was being in checking out the man across the foyer.

“Bye O.”      

* * *

Octavia – who didn’t have class until the afternoon and didn't have the prerequisite of having to wake up at six-thirty to go into the lab – walked Clarke to work the day after that too.

Winter was lazy and unhurried in jumping the final hurdle towards the frostless windows of early Spring, but Clarke’s toes didn’t recoil in shock at the cold of the floor when she slipped them out of bed and she noted the way Octavia delighted in the way the day enabled her to shuck off a layer of outerwear to stroll nonchalantly into The Woods Corporation’s foyer.

It was strange seeing her friend going from the girl with the too-short skirts and too-high heels who straddled nameless frat boy’s laps at parties, who tugged them, slurring and giggling, to the nearest unoccupied space. To the girl quietly and intently putting effort into someone who seemed immune to her natural charm. The security guard – hadn’t spared a glance at Octavia the day before – not that she saw at least, she couldn’t attest to anything beyond what happened before she slipped into the elevator and ran into the lab apologising for being late – which had to have been a special kind of torment for the girl who was prom queen and cheer captain in their senior year.

Stranger still, was the atmosphere than befell Clarke and Lexa’s morning coffee date – date wasn’t right but there wasn’t another word that Clarke felt fit – with Octavia at the table alongside them.

The girl had gaped a little when Clarke introduced them, _‘Lexa, this is my friend, Octavia. O, this is Lexa Woods’,_ but she kept the fangirling about how stunning Lexa Woods was in person versus her full-page spreads in TIME, until they were home on the couch with an overeager Raven. Clarke was thankful that the girl understood boundaries.

She _could_ see that Lexa was navigating uncharted waters though. The CEO kept up the same marble like pretence with Octavia that she did in the office: beautifully cold, could kill a man at ten paces with a glare and silence a boardroom with the lift of her hand, only Clarke was able to see that she was viable to shatter easily.

She watched Lexa pin Octavia with a hard look, manicured fingers twisting her coffee up in measured little circles, assessing this exuberant girl who spoke of her college classes and what Clarke was like in high school. Was she threatened? Clarke stamped out the traitorous thought that creeped its way up her spine, but the prospect was endearing really, she had to swallow the way the corners of her mouth quirked into a smile.

“I’m sorry about Octavia,” she apologised a half-hour later when they were in the elevator and her arm was tingling with proximity to Lexa who was beginning to thaw, her face smoothing out its glass-like exterior. Clarke liked watching it. “She’s been whining since I started here that she never sees me anymore.” It wasn’t strictly a lie, Clarke’s free time had been severely lacking since starting her internship at Lexa’s company, something Octavia and Raven had been chastising her about – _‘you need to get out, Clarke, you need to blow off steam’_ – but what she didn’t tell them was that it was her own fault. No one required her to be at work as early as she was, or stay as late, but that was when Lexa was there and Clarke liked catching those little moments where her top buttons were undone and she was soft.

Regardless, it seemed like a better alternative to _‘my best friend is checking out your security guard’_.

Lexa shook her head. She stared ahead and traced the crease of the elevator doors with her eyes. “No matter,” she told Clarke, “she’s lovely.”

“A pain in the ass, is what she is,” Clarke scoffed. The left side of Lexa’s lips quirked into a smile and the blonde relished her achievement. “I’ve known her since the second grade though, I’m pretty sure my mother loves her more than she loves me, so I think I’m stuck with her.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Really? I am. Do you know she came to a doctor’s appointment with me once?”

“About your mother, I mean,” Lexa corrected.

Clarke faltered. “Oh.” She swallowed. “I’m sure you’re right.”

They stepped out at the twenty-first floor together, which was simultaneously a wonderful, dizzying sensation and threw Clarke a little off balance.

She had seen the way Lexa had been growing antsy lately, her late-night visits to the lab weren’t satisfactory and when each weekly meeting turned up no new result for their goal of producing the artificial blood, and Lexa was a scientist too – so Clarke presumed, she had a solid understanding of theorems that still evaded the blonde’s comprehension – it seemed only natural she would want a hand in her implementing her creation. But in some ways, it seemed more than that.

Clarke watched the way Lexa worked. Outwardly, the CEO had the composure of a work of Greek art; Athena Parthenos, ivory and gold, presiding over her empire with a spear in one hand and victory in the other, she exuded assurance and confidence her jumbled little team would crack the code. But inwardly, the way she tapped at the tablet in hand, commanding animations to simulate the artificial molecules to bond with red blood cells in varying combinations with varying “helpers”, was with the frantic movements of someone desperate.

“Morning,” Becca said as they walked in. She had a pen tucked into her ponytail, her glasses set on her head for the moment, lab coat over her street-clothes. She didn't say anything about the way the two girls walked in together, but Clarke, who returned the greeting with polite enthusiasm, could see something hard in the thin press of her lips. A warning?

Unseeing, Lexa shucked off her coat and bag and went for the pages of refill sitting on the main bench – handwritten diagrams of possible solutions to the standstill they were at – and sifted through the lined pages, humming a distracted _‘hello’_ and offering an off-handed wave. “What’s this?” she questioned as Becca joined her at the opposite bench.

“I was running some equations here yesterday to see if we could simulate an environment that would better encourage the bonding of artificial blood molecules to human DNA,” Lexa nodded and Becca sifted through the papers, finding the one she wanted. “You see, right now, the artificial blood protein chains are broken, but aren’t binding with the test red blood cells, so –”

The obnoxious ring of a phone cut the woman off and Lexa, alarmed, patted down her pockets. She checked the caller ID and Clarke watched a desperate kind of expression flood her features – a micro expression because it was there and gone before Clarke could track it, fleeting as Lexa’s visible concern as she told apologised, telling Becca she had to take it and fled the lab with a click-click of heels against the floor.

Lexa didn’t leave the lab again that day. She picked up her phone again at lunchtime and Clarke watched her disregard countless reminders and schedules meetings with a nonchalant swipe of her thumb, whilst hovering tense and careful over the few text messages. She could see the way the cords of muscles in her neck strained at the action, like she was berating herself and not for the first time that day, Clarke wondered what the urgency of her earlier call was.  

Dialling with practiced ease, Lexa summoned the lunch fetching services of her assistant, offering others coffee to which the majority of the team – whom in their previous knowledge hadn’t strayed down from her glass encased office on the thirtieth floor – declined with wide eyes and shaking heads.

Clarke raised a hand. “Latte, please?”

Lexa nodded in the affirmative. She returned to her work with the request sent, stood at the computer, tablet at her right hand and Becca at the other. The women discussed animatedly, with Becca refuting impossibilities and Lexa becoming progressively antsier, Clarke could see the way each denial ticked in the muscles of her jaw.

“Would it be at all possible to put aside the artificial blood and consider tweaking the bio stimulant itself to ensure compatibility,” someone suggested, hand in their hair, clearly at the end of their tether. “It seems like cutting out unnecessary parts it would be much easier to implement the chip in the long term.”

Lexa turned on them like a caged animal, a dangerous kind of unpredictability in her eyes and Clarke swallowed.

“No,” the brunette snapped, “It wouldn’t. The artificial blood was designed for reasons other than to ensure compatibility with the host, chief among them, to help the human body to metabolise radiation emitted from the device. If there were other options possible, they would have been explored, however I can assure you that I have explored all avenues available and would plead you to get back to the work at hand.”

The unfortunate soul who had posed the suggestion – a lanky guy with glasses and gel in his hair – blanched and nodded, quieting as who Clarke assumed to be Lexa’s executive assistant entered the lab with a brown paper wrapped salad from Grounders and three coffees’ in a takeaway cardboard cup holder.

“Thank you, Harper,” when Lexa spoke it was with the hard edge of her previous comment and Clarke saw the guy shrink and proceed to second guess the majority of his life choices to this day. She smirked. In the little time Clarke had known the brunette personally, she could attest that Lexa had that effect on people.

He didn’t speak for the remainder of the day. The rest of the team didn’t speak directly Lexa for the remainder of the day either, sensing the irritability rolling off their CEO in palpable waves, and just in case it was due to the lack of success they were finding, it seemed pertinent to Clarke they stay quiet, ferrying messages through Becca who navigated the storm cloud surrounding Lexa with practiced ease. And Lexa didn’t speak – aside from incoherent murmurings to Becca as they crunched biological equations – until the sun had fallen to the dusky pink evening outside and Becca was shucking off her lab coat and bidding them both a goodbye, and a _‘don’t stay too late’_ directed at Lexa. She gave them both a hard to read look as she exited through the door, one Lexa studiously avoided and Clarke was unsure what to make of. But as she powered off the tablet in her hands with a heavy sigh – stifled so it sounded like a gust of wind wrenched from her chest – Lexa turned to Clarke, hands at her side and wide eyed. “I was rude today,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

Clarke blinked, “why are you apologising to me?” She tried not to think of the fact that it was she who Lexa was apologising to, not her poor team-member who walked out keeping a wide berth from the CEO who hadn’t acknowledged his presence.

“Because,” she swallowed and Clarke could see regret in the bob of her throat. “I’m not always like this, and I want you to know that.”

“I do know,” Clarke nodded. She thought of their late nights together, few though they may have been, of Lexa with her sleeves rolled up and how she traced her fingers over the sketch she had caught Clarke drawing, revenant and enraptured. “Work is stressful,” she reasoned. “You run a company, you deserve to be cut some slack.”

Lexa scoffed, not unkindly Clarke would say, but disbelieving and it made the blonde hurt for her. “I should get you on my board of directors. They don’t seem to agree with me on that point but perhaps you’ll help them see that,” she quirked a smile, “lord knows my Friday morning meetings would brighten greatly in terms of aesthetic appeal.”

Clarke choked, then hummed a little laugh, unsure whether Lexa meant to say the last bit out loud. She had an annoying little habit of concealing all traces of human emotion when she detected it – especially, it seemed, around Clarke – but as she gathered a stack of nearby papers between her palms and shuffled them into a neatened pile, calming her nervous hands, Clarke watched the easiness in the slope of her face and felt liberated at the knowledge that perhaps Lexa had stopped keeping up her emotionless pretence. Clarke was demonstrative by nature, quick and easy to express her feelings, or to hold a grudge or to fall in love – she couldn’t help but thinking that was why her and Finn were like they were, a fire that burnt hard and bright and scalded her in the end. It had made recent months with Lexa difficult to navigate and the thought that maybe Lexa was opening up to her made something rise in her chest, fizzing like champagne bubbles and hope.

She twisted on her heel to face Lexa. “Hey, would you like to have coffee with me?”  
“I –” Lexa frowned, a cute little scrunch of her brow that gathered in the spot between her eyes and Clarke couldn’t tell if it was teasing or not. “Did we not have coffee this morning?”

“No, like,” she swallowed, _“coffee_ coffee.”

There was an uneven pause, and in that moment Clarke wished nothing more than for the greying linoleum floor to swallow her up. Had she misread the situation? Perhaps, but truthfully, she didn’t think there was any other way to read a comment about her aesthetic appeal.

“Okay,” Lexa acquiesced. “Then yes, I would like to have _coffee_ coffee with you.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” Clarke smiled, broad and feeling the stretch in her cheeks. She hid it in the collar of her shirt as she turned back to the bench, thinking on the fact that she hadn’t smiled this wide when her father pressed her first acrylic paint kit into her eager, eight-year-old hands.

 

**_CLARKE’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_  

“You’re _dating?”_ Octavia squealed, obnoxious and loud in Clarke’s ear as she leant against the blonde on their too-small couch, wrapped in her brother’s high school football shirt and pyjama pants.

Raven scoffed from the armchair opposite, “calm down there soldier, they’ve been out for coffee once, we don’t quite have to evacuate the supply closets yet.”

Humming in nonchalant agreement with the Latina who sipped at her beer and hiked her feet onto the coffee table, Clarke swallowed down gratitude, because Raven was right. Coffee had gone well, as well as it had the past seven times they had shared small talk and in their little table tucked in the corner and the next day they had done the same, but Clarke wasn’t sure if what they had been doing since was _coffee_ coffee or just coffee. Lexa seemed content – Clarke was too – and the blonde didn’t like to ask.

“They’ve been having coffee every day Clarke’s been at work,” Octavia scoffed.

If Raven didn’t care about their couch so much she would have done a spit-take. “What!”

“Thanks, O,” Clarke grouched.

“I was with her once.”

_“What!”_

“And tell her why you were there, O,” Clarke jested. “Did it have anything to do with the security guard you’ve been fawning over?”

Raven slammed her beer onto the coffee table and crossed her arms with a petulant faux-pout. “Why as no one told me these things? When did it happen?”

Octavia shrugged, “maybe when you were off with Finn,” and two sets of wide eyes fell to her, where she picked out kernels of popcorn from the bottom of the bowl, innocent and demeanour casual, masking the shit-eating grin she wore because Octavia got off on stirring the pot.

This was new. Finn was in Bellamy’s old frat – one that he was known infamously within – and it stood to reason that Octavia’s brother would be kept up to date with the comings and goings, especially if Raven was trying to be subtle as she did the walk of shame from Finn’s room because the girl was anything but subtle, a hurricane in human form if ever there was one, Clarke was sure Raven could compete with Cal on that point.

“‘M not proud of it,” Raven defended, quietly. “I just – Finn knows me.” Finn and Raven and been in an on-again-off-again relationship before Clarke met either of them, neighbours from an early age, it was Clarke’s understanding that Finn had helped her through years of dealing with the treatment of her alcoholic mother. Clarke softened, her features smoothing out from unconcealed, unattractive surprise to understanding. “I know you,” she reasoned softly, “and you don’t come crawling into bed with me every time things get bad.”

Raven pouted. “Thought about it,” and Clarke barked out a laugh, “touché. But according to O, I’m a taken woman.”

“According to O, we need more popcorn,” Octavia notified them when the bowl was empty, she shoved it under Clarke’s nose and the blonde reluctantly pushed herself off of the couch, rounding the kitchen island to pluck another microwave packet of popcorn out of the top shelf of the pantry.

Opened popcorn packet right side up on the microwave plate, Clarke’s eyes lingered, interested, on the measly stack of mail on the far corner of the island that was their regular dumping ground for school-notes, knick-knacks and an unreasonable amount of bobby pins. They didn’t get mail. It was usually restricted to monthly utility bills which were forwarded on to Abby in whichever manner was politest but didn't mean Clarke had to see her mother if they were on the outs.

This wasn’t the water bill though – not in the envelope it was in branded with company logo and neat, slanted handwriting. “What’s this?” she asked, thumbing the envelope open.

“Something fancy?” Raven suggested, “either that or it’s informing your you’re fired. It came this morning.”

Octavia’s brow dipped. “Can you be fired from an internship?”

“Mm, not really,” Clarke mused, shaking out the contents of the envelope. “It’s high improbable.”  
“A love letter then?”

Clarke shook her head, her hair slipping past her shoulders so that she had to push it back from her eyes. “An invitation.”

“To a party?”

“Keep it in your pants, O.”

“To a work function,” Clarke corrected, voice absent as she scanned the typed invitation, as elegant and put together as the company’s CEO was herself. If Clarke lifted the card to her nose she liked to think she could smell Lexa’s perfume – subtle floral, cotton and musk, something fresh and clean about it that the blonde welcomed after the some of the BO and too-strong cologne she was subjected to her lectures. The thought that maybe Lexa handled this invitation personally was an intriguing thought that made her head spin, maybe they had been having _coffee_ coffee. “To The Woods Corporation Spring Gala.”

“I was right,” Raven snapped her fingers and downed a sip, “something fancy. Is there an invitation to be Lexa’s date as well?”

Speechless, Clarke shook her head.

 

**_GROUNDERS COFFEE CO. NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

She asked Lexa about it over coffee. Whether it was _coffee_ coffee or just coffee was yet to be disconcerted but Lexa was sitting opposite her, back to the window with an easy half-smile and the wisps of hair at the crown of her head highlighted in the sputtering beams of early morning sunlight, a halo of chestnut and gold.

“It’s an annual event,” Lexa explained, swilling the remaining half of her coffee around in her cup, measured movements that ensured it didn’t splash through the little opening in the lid. “A charitable endeavour mostly, as well as to draw the interests of new investors.”

Clarke frowned.

“My company is young, Clarke. It would be foolish to think that it can be completely self-sufficient. The investors are integral,” Lexa went on, “and contrary to popular belief they don’t simply come flocking. You have to put on a show; money and power are what people recognise in my experience.” She lowered her eyes to the way her hands sat on the table and Clarke’s brow dipped under the weight of the sad feeling in her chest. The thought that the world Lexa lived in was a construct of people that didn’t appreciate the person but what the person could offer them caused a sickly film on Clarke’s tongue, sour and distasteful, that she couldn’t swallow away. Lexa didn’t deserve that. She was special in a way that Clarke didn’t understand.  

“Not everyone,” Clarke murmured and Lexa looked up. Stray strands of her hair had fallen messily in front of her eyes, they made her look small for a moment, vulnerable in a way Clarke hadn’t seen before despite their late-night games of twenty-questions and early morning talks about the weather. Then, she pushed her hair behind her ears and Lexa Woods was back, chiselled cheekbones and pressed appearance.

“Not everyone,” she amended, then took a sip of coffee and changed the conversation at a dizzying pace. “You’ll have a plus one, of course.”

It was a statement, not a question and Clarke didn’t know what reply the brunette wanted – if any. Was she angling? The prospect of Raven being right was a strange one, so she grinned playfully and asked: “where’s your plus one?”

Lexa went rigid. The cords of muscles in her neck tightened and her jaw ticked, worked itself over and over, like she was measuring herself.

“She’s…indisposed.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke doesn’t have anything to wear, Raven demands to be heard and Lexa runs into trouble at the gala with some unwanted guests - but nothing that Clarke can’t fix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a bit longer than expected, sorry, I got distracted around Christmas but will be back to writing this regularly again. I also had to split this chapter in half because it was getting longer than I would have liked but the second part is too short to be a chapter by itself so I'm merging it with the chapter after. 
> 
> TW: mild panic attack

**_CLARKE’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_**

_PRESENT_

“Octavia!”

Clarke fell face first onto her bed, paying little attention to melodrama or the whiplash she received as her neck rebounded from the spring of the mattress. Whoever thought it would be _‘all good’_ to wait until the week before the company gala to figure out an appropriate outfit, was brainless and clearly didn’t care about her mental health — it was her and she hated herself for it.

“Hm?” Octavia appeared around the door frame all messy bun and sweatpants hanging low off her petite frame, munching nonchalantly on an untoasted strawberry pop-tart.

“I have nothing to wear this weekend,” Clarke rolled onto her back with a heaving sigh, chin tilted to her chest to watch Octavia peruse her closet, pop-tart between her teeth.

The brunette tugged on one of Clarke’s dresses then stowed it back in the closet, “I’d offer to lend you something of mine –”  

“Probably wouldn’t fit –”

“But I’m going to the gala as well, so –”

“Sorry, _what?”_

Octavia smirked, smug and proud of herself, but Clarke could see the way everything in her body softened when she said it, the slope of her lips was less cheeky and more happy – content. The blonde’s eyes widened. _“No?”_ she gasped, “the security guard?”

“His name is Lincoln, Lincoln Walsch. I bumped into him a couple of weeks ago, that time we went for coffee. We’ve been out a couple of times.”

 _“Try ran headfirst into him on purpose!”_ came Raven from the living room.

“Yes, thanks, Rae!” Octavia rolled her eyes, turning to Clarke, “I might have staged things,” she shrugged, “can’t blame a girl for getting things in motion.”

Clarke giggled, “you can blame her for tripping over said security guard like a twelve-year-old – _oof,”_ she wheezed when Octavia launched herself at her, feeling as though her chest would collapse under the force of the girl’s weight. “O! Please!” She shoved the brunette off with a ruthless elbow.

“At least I’m not having coffee with my boss every morning on the off-off-chance she’ll declare her undying love for me,” Octavia nudged her, hard in the ribs where it tickled more than hurt and she let out a choked sounding squawk, “why isn’t Lexa going as your plus one?”

Clarke went quiet.

_“You have a plus one?”_

Raven swung into the room, one hand on the door frame, the other on the box of pop-tarts to which Octavia made grabby hands and Clarke grouched that she would get crumbs on the bed. “Yes, Rae. I’m guessing all the employees do. Why?”

Raven smirked and marched herself to the bed, “you’re taking me.”

“Raven –”

“No negotiations, it’s not fair if you both go and leave me here.”

Clarke let out a noise that almost wasn't human, a guttural, long suffering sigh. “Know, that if you talk to Lexa about me – if you talk to her at all – I’m renouncing our friendship and you can get out of my house.”

“Your mother’s house.”

“That goes for you too, O.”

 

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_**

_PRESENT_

Lexa dreaded these things. The cool slip of satin against her skin, the weight of a chilled champagne flute between her fingers. The diamond earrings and pressed Hermès pocket squares, Chanel perfume and Dior cologne. They were the keys to a world she didn’t belong in. Costia’s future, not hers.

She wiped her palms on her coat and swallowed down the clammy feeling that cooled her stomach glass when the elevator doors parted on the top floor of her building – the designated functions venue with sprawling floor to ceiling views of Manhattan.

She wanted to be sick.

Since the accident she had managed to scrape by with brief appearances at company functions, an air kiss, a half hug, a wave, then barricade herself in her fishbowl office, the hem of her Giorgio Armani gown dragging on the carpet in a way that would made Anya cringe, Jimmy Choo’s slung into the chair opposite her. She filed reports and reviewed projects whilst Titus entertained guests on her behalf, but tonight was the first time she was appearing in this capacity without Costia on her arm.

It was at Titus’s insistence, of course, whose word she would normally heed with caution but she feared he _would_ snap if she declined again, feared that he would go red-faced and pound his polished, pointy shoes into the floor like a tantruming child because _‘there are whispers, Lexa’_ and _‘It’s imperative you appear as a show of commitment to the company’._

(Laughable really, that the best show of her commitment would be the very thing that made her spend time away from her work, but she had told Clarke that all these people understand was money and power and it was true).

So, she acquiesced for brevity’s sake, stamping down the thought of what the tabloids would say – the rumours and false-truths they would spout at the sight of no one at her side – that was enough to make her physically nauseas.

But Clarke would be there. Clarke in heels and a pretty dress. The thought calmed her somewhat, she swallowed and stepped in.

Lexa ignored the ruffle of the crowd at her entrance, fashionably late, elegant and cold, chiselled jaw clenched against the way her stomach roiled and her pulse fluttered so that she could feel it in her neck. She passed her coat into the hands of hired help in the absence of her own employees and accepted a pre-offered glass of champagne, nodding to the suit-clad business men with satin swathed wives on their arm. They circled the venue like sharks. Lexa hoped they couldn’t smell her fear.

She appraised the gala for a long moment, clinging to the shreds of safety and comfort she found in the polite smiles of the doormen and the easy exit. Titus was visible in the midst of the throng, recognisable by his bald head, lording over his little collection of esteemed guests with an easy type of charm that Lexa was experienced enough not to fall for. The guests though, hung off his every word as he marketed for her, forever promoting the company and their work. Lexa supposed she should thank him but the thought made her as nauseous as appearing without Costia on her arm. Her relationship with Titus was complex at best.

A head taller than the crowd, Lincoln plucked two champagne flutes off a waiter’s tray, a petite brunette on his arm that she recognised as the girl Clarke had brought to Grounders that morning some weeks ago. Octavia, she thought. Well, that was a certainly a new development. She filed it away for later and delved into the throng with sweat slick palms and a quaking stomach.

* * *

Lexa couldn’t explain the power inherent in the click of heels against hard floors. It was commanding. Exhilarating. She could be holding the fractured pieces of herself – her life – together with peeling duct-tape and gorilla glue, but people would look at her with reverence when they heard her heels against the tiles, parting like a red sea of silks and satin.

“Lexa.”

The warm weight of Anya’s hand on her shoulder was a welcome tether and one Lexa thought she would come loose without as she turned towards the woman and embraced her in a faux-casual hug.

She breathed to calm her quickening pulse. “Anya.”

“You’re fine,” Anya said – slow and calming, for her ears only – before pulling away and clinking glasses in an excuse to take a sip. “I see you haven’t lost your touch.”

Lexa frowned, brow dipping delicately. She watched Anya gesture her champagne glass in a vague circle at the way the throng of guests who had split in her wake, at the way they were not-so-subtly looking from afar. She cringed. It reminded her of her senior prom in the worst way possible, girls twittering behind manicured fingers at the sight of Lexa, at the sight of Lexa with Costia and she remembered anew why she hated these things. A wave of repulsion made her sway.

“I didn’t think you would be holding up as well after years of locking yourself in your ivory tower.”

Lexa frowned. “I made appearances.”

“A quick jaunt around the dance floor hardly counts as an appearance, Lexa.”

Distracted, Lexa smoothed the stem of her glass between her thumb and her forefinger, not replying. “They’re looking at me,” she hummed, nodding to a group to their left.

“You’re the CEO.”

“They’re talking about Costia.”

“No one _knows_ about Costia. It was taken care of.” Anya’s words calmed Lexa somewhat. She remembered the accident in a hazy blur of chosen memories, chief among them the shaky, out-of-body feeling and the blood – so much blood – but Anya was there too, stern and commanding in the face of Lexa’s incapacitation, handing out non-disclosure agreements like they were flyers for a child's dance recital. A Stanford Business School graduate, she was adept at taking care of things. “As far as any one knows, you two broke up two years ago.”

“Okay,” Lexa nodded, her stomach churned.

“Okay,” Anya took a sip of champagne. “Someone’s looking for you.”

Lexa took a fortifying breath, lifting her chin, working her jaw, readying herself for an interrogation and – _oh._

“Clarke,” she swallowed, “hello.”

Clarke Griffin was a vision in navy. Plunging neckline, clinging fabric, hair pinned and curled, piled delicately over her left shoulder. Her makeup accentuated her cheekbones and her dress did the same for her eyes so they were like blue, endless things that Lexa’s breath got lost in. Anya had to pull her out of her reverie with delicate fingers at the small of her back because Lexa was dangerously close to asphyxiating. She sipped her champagne and fanned herself with a subtle wave of her hand.

“Lexa! Hey,” Clarke smiled, she weaved through the throng and threw an unceremonious arm around Lexa, enveloping her with the sweet scent of perfume – something fruity and floral, vanilla and musk. Dumbfounded and wondering when they reached this easy hug-as-a-greeting stage of their relationship, Lexa returned the gesture, balancing her drink in her free hand. She thought it was the most skin-on-skin contact she had had with another person since Costia, both of their dresses were strapping, showing shoulders and chests and arms, and Lexa felt strangely cold when the blonde’s pleasant warmth was gone a beat later.

“Wow,” Clarke said, confident and carefree, “you look gorgeous.” Was it the atmosphere? Lexa wished she could be as easily influenced by the glitz and the glamour and the sprawling views. For the first time in two years it didn’t feel good to be immune to the charm.

“Thank – thanks,” Lexa dipped her head, all eloquence gone “so do you. I –”

_“Clarkey!”_

Lexa snapped her jaw shut, teeth rattling as she watched the Latina shoulder her way to them, making faces at the people who tsked at her like they were the problem, clad in a clinging red dress, dark hair almost auburn in the lights, but not quite. Her lipstick was a bright as the fabric of her dress as she hung off Clarke’s arm and Lexa wondered how Clarke kept pulling these gorgeous women out of the woodwork, her heart doing something akin to sinking, stomach cooling to glass.

“Lexa,” Clarke started introductions with a sweeping hand, “this is my friend, Raven, Raven, this is Lexa Woods.”

Raven was smirking a wide, stretched smirk, mirth dancing in her eyes as she gestured her champagne glass erratically, “you throw quite the shindig, Lexa Woods,” she commented.

“Thank you,” Lexa tried to ignore the Cheshire-like grin on her face and how the way the word _‘friend’_ fell off Clarke’s lips made her head reel, but then she watched Raven’s eyes flick to the side and rove nonchalantly down Anya’s body, and raised an unsure eyebrow.

“Oh,” she collected herself when expectant looks were turned her way, “uhm, Clarke, Raven, this is Anya Frey – my friend and business mentor.”

Anya shook both of their hands, “a pleasure.”

There was an uncertain pause. Raven hummed. Anya clicked her tongue. Clarke willed her friend not to say a thing. Lexa, stoic and commanding, was decidedly unsure how to proceed.  
“Well,” Raven announced, “if you excuse me, I’m going to find the bar,” she pumped a fist in the air, “free alcohol and I’m here for it.” Lexa watched her slink away and turned back to Clarke who rolled her eyes like this behaviour was expected. Clarke’s friends were steadily giving Lexa a headache.

Similarly, Anya decided to take her leave with a polite, much more civilised nod to Clarke, “It’s lovely to meet you, Clarke,” then, hand on the small of Lexa’s back she leant close, “I’ll leave you two.”

“I –”

Anya pinned her with a _look_ and Lexa acquiesced, closing her mouth and letting the woman walk away, turning back to Clarke wobbly and unsure like she had taken the training wheels off her bicycle.

“You were right.”

She watched the blonde smile and the way her lipsticked lips wrapped around the rim of her glance, the dance of her throat as she swallowed the sip.

“Money and power,” Clarke gestured around the venue, “you put on quite the show.”

“Oh, it’s not me,” she shook her head, “not really, it’s my employees. I hardly have anything to do with these events nowadays,” she laughed and was proud of herself when it didn’t feel forced or wrenched unwanted from her chest, it was light and bubbly and Clarke’s eyes brightened for it, like it was an unknown achievement. Encouraged, Lexa continued, “truth be told, I’m here under duress.”

_I’m here because you’re here._

“Aw, I’m sure that’s not true.”

“I’d much rather be reviewing quarterly reports in my office right now, I can assure you,” Lexa insisted. “I detest these things.”

“What,” Clarke teased in faux-shock, hand clasped to her chest, “ _the_ Lexa Woods, doesn’t like parties?” Lexa nodded in confirmation.

“Well,” Clarke shrugged, “you keep a good face.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, but I am genuinely unsure?”

“It’s a compliment,” Clarke assured her, hand brushing Lexa’s shoulder, she nodded, “always.”  

“Thank you.”

It was quiet for a beat, all soft and serene, the quirk in Lexa’s lips and the slow blink of cerulean eyes, like the world had fallen away and it was just them, just safety and comfort. Lexa wanted to reach out and touch her. Her stomach wasn’t twisting anymore, the nauseas, uptight knot in her chest subsided into obscurity like the unwanted waves on the tail of the storm because there was a pretty girl standing across from her. And Lexa hated herself, she firmly decided, because her thoughts were traitorous and wrong but she was a sucker for a pretty girl in blue.

Costia had been wearing blue the day they had met; a ridiculously expensive Gucci thing that Lexa had spouted a witty one-liner about. The redhead hadn’t batted an eyelid at Lexa’s shoddy, sarcastic teenage defence mechanism and she had been a goner there and then.

Costia used to look at her the way Clarke was looking at her now, like she was invaluable, sacrosanct, something other than a business woman or a child playing god. Lexa was seized with the frantic, frenzied need to haul Clarke close by the bare shoulders and hold her tight for fear she would fade like smoke on the wind. It was so wrong, so desperately, unalterably wrong and she detested every fibre of her being that preened when Clarke smiled at her and every involuntary quirk of dusky lips.

“Your friend,” Lexa said, she had to stop thinking before she made herself dizzy. “She seems nice.”

“She’s a handful, I know,” Clarke replied, apologetic, and Lexa wanted to tell her not to be.

“I saw Octavia here, too. With Lincoln.”

“Ah, yes,” Clarke affirmed, “when O puts her mind to something, O gets it.”

“Lincoln's smiling,” she watched them on the dance floor, the upturn of his lips as his hands settled, revenant and gentle on Octavia’s waist. The brunette looked so small compared to him, fragile and petite, having to stretch upwards to slide her arms around his neck and when she gave him a joking tug to bring him down to her level, he grinned like she hadn’t seen before. Lexa was familiar with Lincoln, when he had first joined the company he had been reduced to night shifts, appearing with tepid little knocks on her office door when he needed to lock up the building, coaxing her out of her work with more efficiency than Costia was able to. She looked back at Clarke. “He doesn’t smile a lot. Octavia with be good for him.”

“Lexa!” a silky voice greeted her from three paces away and Lexa craned her neck to see a girl recognised with cool dread in her stomach.

“Ontari,” she said with the self-assurance of a CEO in her voice, and was rewarded with an unwanted hug, different to the one Clarke had pulled her into in that it was cold and as entirely un-genuine as its owner.

“I uhm,” Clarke gestured in a vague direction, “I should go. Make sure Raven isn’t drinking your bar dry.” She excused herself with a polite half-smile and Lexa wanted to tell her not to go, but Ontari was hanging off her arm now, fake and trilling about fashion tabloids like they were friends.

She breathed hard. They _weren’t_ friends.

She hadn’t been invited – Lexa had overseen the invitations Titus had laid on her desk one morning, an effort to get her involved – the only reason she would have to be here would if her aunt was here and –

“Miss Woods, it’s been far too long.”

Lexa swallowed the bile that rose to the apex of her throat.

“Long enough,” she replied through gritted teeth. “Nia.”

The woman – who regularly called into question Lexa’s standing in her field, her emotional maturity and whether she was old enough to head a biomedical empire – walked like she was stalking prey. It was unsettling at the least, eyes gleaming, halting in front of Lexa to slink an arm around her niece's shoulders, hand like a claw at Ontari’s collar bone. She had a champagne flute in her free hand and a heavy diamond bracelet weighing her other wrist and Lexa felt the cords of muscles in her neck tighten as the woman spoke again, lips curling on words like a sinister secret. “Lovely evening, as usual. You always do so well with these events.” Which was a lie, because Nia checked up on Lexa every chance she got and knew the brunette kept herself as far away as possible from thousand-dollar affairs and black-tie galas. Even before the accident – before Costia. Even more so now she wasn’t here.

“Hm,” Lexa smiled – it didn’t reach her eyes – she pursed her lips. “Funny, I don’t recall you on the guest list.”

“Titus contacted me,” Nia said, there was a chilling brand of smug in the way her lips curled and her eyes lighted. No one, Lexa decided, relish in the pain of another person. She breathed so hard, she could feel it in the tightening of her stomach muscles.

“Don’t frown, dear,” Nia tsked, “It’s unbecoming on someone of your age.” She sipped her champagne, “speaking of, I hear you’re working on a new project…Working very _hard_ on a new project.” Lexa was certain the two weren’t mutually exclusive – frowning and her project that is – but Nia had never mastered the skill of easy charm. She ruled with something more akin to iron-clad fear. “Are you not at all worried other areas of the company might become…lacking?” She laughed, a grating, unkind noise, “one should keep up appearances in all areas, you must agree?”

Lexa nodded her understanding, not her agreement. “I’m not,” she replied, measured, “worried, that is. I have lab team perfectly capable and the utmost faith in my employees. If my employees fall apart at the mere thought of my spending time away from their divisions, well the, I haven’t done my job as CEO, have I?” It was perfectly polite, prim, proper and marble clad, but she could see Nia falter for an appropriate response and the surge of warmth in her chest was an indication she had won this round. But the woman was already recovering with chilling grace.

“But of course, I have no doubt in your abilities,” the ease Nia was able to lie with caused the sick feeling lying dormant in the pit of Lexa’s stomach to break and crest, nausea rising something hot and acidic to her throat in revulsion. “Still, it must be so much on someone of your age, responsibilities, people pulling you left and right, and…” Lexa didn’t like the way she paused, the length she paused for as if leaving space for something unspoken but implied. “Surely it takes a toll.”

The woman raised a sculpted brow and Lexa swallowed bile. She _knew_.

No one was supposed to know, if not because of the meaningless condolences and the tabloid spreads, for the simple matter of discretion and privacy, the fact that Costia was too precious to be tainted by the cruelty of Lexa’s work or the people involved with it. But there was something in the way Nia spoke that made her uncomfortable, her gown growing too heavy, the straps too tight around her shoulders and neck.

Nia knew and it was an awful, choking thought, what she had against Lexa now. She couldn’t think – wouldn’t think – couldn’t breathe in such a way the pressed out of her chest without being replaced, movements agitated, hand fisting in the silk of her gown, increasingly desperate. Her stomached rolled, champagne and bile. Her vision disfigured. She pressed the heel of her hand, hard to the center of her chest, fingers curling into her neckline, crushing the delicate material in the dampening palm of her hand, it ached and tingled.

She needed out. She couldn’t be near that woman that carried cruel smugness with her like a tangible being, a perpetual presence that choked and choked until all the was left in her wake was grey and sucked dry carcasses. She wouldn’t survive it.

She brushed past Nia, the cold swish of silk and the outraged _‘tsk’_ , “excuse me.” It was breathless and faint.

The world tilted on its axis – somehow, she was un steady in her heels even though she hadn’t had more than one drink – champagne sloshed over the rim of her glass, dousing her fingers and perhaps the front of her dress. She couldn’t tell anymore. She didn’t want to be able to tell. She slipped back through the party and shouldered her way through the throng of guests, providing tight lipped smiles to those who acknowledge her, while the increasing sense of claustrophobia bared down on her chest.

On the opposite side of the venue, agitated fingers relinquished her empty champagne flute to a member of the wait staff passing by. His face was familiar, the organisers hired the same caterers year in and out, but the expression on his face – it might have been one of sympathy, almost pity, her head wasn’t clear and her vision was blurring – rubbed her the wrong way. He didn’t _know_ her. No one here _knew_ her. Not Titus, not Nia, not even Clarke and the guilt wormed thick and toxic in her chest.

She scowled bitterly, shoved the empty glass into his free hand rather than onto his tray, and brushed past, tears stinging like acid, bile rising to her throat and a subconscious _‘sorry’_ on her lips.

* * *

Accepting an ostentatious looking cocktail from the bow-tie wearing bartender – bluish and showcasing an outrageous amount of exotic alcohol – Clarke watched the way Lexa shoved the icey-looking woman clean in the shoulder. If this was one of the parties Clarke attended, filled with Lynx drenched frat boys and hormonal girls in tight skirts, both shover and shovee would have been doused in cheap beer within minutes. But etiquette was required at these functions, and Lexa left than _‘tsks’_ and filthy looks in her wake that were no less lethal than a piss-poor beer shower.

Clarke watched the desperation in the way she walked, the way she swallowed, jaw ticking, shoulder blades flexing under the backless fabric of her dress. She looked gorgeous, hair curled and loose. Gorgeous but desperate. Breathless like a caged animal.

She waited for someone to go after her. Anya perhaps? But Octavia had pointed out her and Raven slinking, hand-in-hand to a darkened corner, whispering dirty nothings presumably and mimed a faux-gag. Clarke had thought it would be good for Raven, a reprieve from desperate, half-drunken hook-ups with Finn because he was there, but now Lexa was crying and the urge Clarke felt to sooth was more than obligation.

She swallowed her cocktail – a Sapphire martini she thought the bartender had said as he handed the drink over. Regardless of what it was it burnt her throat and she winced, face contorting as she thanked the bewildered looking man with a husky voice.

The bathroom on this floor was tucked around the corner behind the bar and smelt like clinical disinfectant and lemongrass soap and when Clarke pushed on the door to the ladies it was open.  
“Lexa?”

The noise from inside was somewhere between a shout and a gurgle. Clarke pushed it open. “Lexa, it’s Clarke. I saw you run off, I –”

Lexa had her back to the door, hands braced on the rim of the sink, fingers so tight that she was sure the porcelain would break and crumble like brittle clay. The back of her dress dipped low at her tailbone, deliciously low, like one wrong move and the fabric would melt to a pool of designer silk on the tiles low. And there was a delicate silver chain hanging from the straps that traced the hollow of her spine, but she was quaking. Her whole body rattling with shuttered breaths and violent trembles, swaying like she was overcompensating on roiling seas and Clarke scolded herself.

“Lexa, are you okay?”

She spun at Clarke’s voice, the small of her back pressed to the porcelain, drawn up and tense. She scrubbed the tears off her cheeks with violent hands and left red welts in the wake of her nails. “I can’t – I can’t breathe. I – ah, I’m dizzy, I –”  

Clarke nodded. _Symptoms_ , she could deal with those. “Lexa,” she held her hands up, advancing slowly. “I think you’re having a panic attack. You’re okay.”

Lexa looked at her, eyes unfocused, body language antsy. She swayed and caught herself with uncoordinated hands, narrowly missing a harrowing collision with the hard tile underfoot. “Okay,” Clarke hummed, “should we sit down?” She framed it as a question but it wasn’t. Gentle hands led them both to the spare stretch of wall beneath the automatic hand dryers, praying they didn’t go off –  it was a better option that crouching beneath the sinks.

Lexa pressed herself into the wall hard, cold tiles on her bare back and shoulders, like she was trying to ground herself. Her chest heaved, then heaved again, quick, sharp intakes of breath expanding her ribcage with needy desperation, crying hard. “I just – I need,” she hacked oxygen into her lungs, fingers stretching neckline of her gown, “I need more time. I – I – she n-needs more time.”

“Who, needs time? Time for what?”

“C-Cos – Costia, she needs – she needs time,” she blinked hard like things were falling out of focus and stretched the neckline of her gown, clawing for oxygen. “I just – I need, she needs – more time.”

“Lexa who’s Costia?”

The expression Lexa turned on her was so desperate and distraught that Clarke wanted to sink into the tiles, into the cavity between the floors because the brunette’s eyes were watery and her lip was wobbling. She was looking at Clarke like she was something precious she had shattered with careless hands.

“Lexa, I need you to breathe for me okay?”  
No response. The girl’s breath exploded like a freight train in her chest, panicked and frenzied and Clarke drummed antsy fingers on her silk clad thigh, thinking to days spent at the hospital with her mother as Abby calmed distraught family members having received _the news_ – the news the doctors would stand in the door frame of the waiting room and steel themselves to bear. She straightened.

“Can I touch you?” Clarke was rewarded with a nod, “good,” she hummed, “okay.”

Lexa’s hand was cold when Clarke’s fingers curled into it, prying it off the tiles. It was cold and clamming from salty tears and champagne glass condensation but the blonde took it her own, feeling the piano player fingers and soft lines in her palm. She pressed it to the wall of her chest, just above the plunging neckline of her gown and tried not to think.

“Can you feel me breathing?” She took two deep, steady breaths for show and Lexa nodded, something erratic and frenzied. “Good,” she nodded, “try and follow my breathing.” She encouraged Lexa to press a hand to her own chest and track the rise and fall, how it slowed from where it felt like her heart would jack-knife out of her chest to a breathing rate that was manageable. Clarke kept Lexa’s hand pressed to her chest.

“That’s good,” Clarke nodded feeling oddly uncomfortable. Speaking like she would to a two-year-old felt inexplicably offensive to do to someone as formidable as Lexa Woods – the easy way she had parted the party when she entered took Clarke’s breath away for a reason that wasn’t entirely safe for work – but this girl curled into the tiles of the bathroom looked less like Lexa Woods than anyone she had ever seen. Clarke wondered if anyone else saw her like this – like someone to be soothed rather than revered from a distance like a deity in a glass case.

Her eyes were watery like someone had been careless with water colours and the pigment had run, and with the way she was bent, shoulders hunched, the fabric of her dress pooled off her shoulders and around her middle. Steeling herself she wiped her nose on the back of her hand in the way Cal used to do when she first came to the Griffins – a sickly child with watery eyes. The cuffs of her sleeves and gone snot-green and ratty by the time she had grown out of the phase and Clarke had to knit her fingers before she tried to stop Lexa from doing it now.

Instead, she watched the CEO rally herself like she was preparing for war, scarred and battle weary – first her shoulders pressing length into her neck, then her jaw working, ticking over. She hadn’t stopped shaking, was pressing herself into the cold press of the tiles like she was trying to fight it and Clarke wanted to tell her that there was nothing to fight but knew it would fall on deaf ears. Her chest felt tight, watching Lexa like this hurt her physically but she steeled herself and waited for the brunette to ride out the lingering, disorienting claustrophobia of her panic attack sitting on her heels.

“My fiancée.”

“Hm?”

Lexa swallowed like thick molasses, slow and stuck. Her voice sounded like window panes rattling in the wind. “Costia,” she whispered. She eyed the contours of Clarke’s frown. “You asked me who she was – is. She’s my fiancée.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around and reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa tells Clarke about Costia, both girls come to some unexpected personal realisations and Clarke really hates going to Friday night dinner.

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

 It started slow. Like a dull ache in her head and Clarke briefly wondered if she had had too much champagne.

But then, her cells felt like they were folding in on themselves and the force of the hurt in her chest shocked her – the feeling that had come on so slowly, so familiar and comforting that she hadn’t known the fullest extent of it until it was being ripped from where it had fused herself to her being. Her breath rattled. “Oh.” There were so many. Enough for a lifetime trapped between aching heartbeats. _‘Oh, you’re engaged.’ ‘Oh, you have a fiancée.’_ And never once was there an _‘oh, I’m in love with you’_ because the now forbidden words sat like heavy cream on her tongue – curdled.

If she thought about it, she could recall a post she saw at the bottom of Lexa’s Instagram, a city skyline and an auburn-haired girl that wasn’t Lexa, captioned _‘NYC with her’_ and nothing else. The next post was dated a year and a half later when candid shots of flowers and food were replaced with sky rise offices and company galas – like someone had done a mass delete and remodelled, new profile picture, new username, new person holding onto to a blurry girl with the widest smile. What that what Lexa had meant when she said her plus one was indisposed?

Clarke shook her head – she had to stop thinking or she would make herself dizzy. As she did so her hair frayed out of its stronghold of bobby pins and hairspray and she felt small, like she had skinned her knee and wanted to crawl into her father's lap and listen to the slow vibrations of his breath, only the hurt was more incapacitating than even the worst playground battle scar and she doubted the healing properties of kissing it better.

She wanted to cry. Lexa was crying – tragic, silent tears down marble cut cheeks because crying was a weakness Lexa didn’t indulge herself in. Clarke wanted to ask her if fighting the world ever got tiring.

“What’s your favourite city?”

Lexa choked, a wet sound. She sniffed and blinked, her tears melted into the sharp jut of her jaw. “What?”

“The best city you’ve been to, visited, lived in – other than New York, of course. What is it?”

If Clarke could keep a strong face maybe Lexa wouldn’t know the things she thought about. That she wanted to kiss her the time she had asked her to _coffee_ coffee. That seeing Lexa’s cheeks pink upon seeing her in her gown made something hot, something dangerously like arousal swim in the pit of her stomach. That she dreamt of soft touches and the cool press of lips and the way Lexa looked at her.

“Los Angeles.”

If Clarke could keep herself composed, maybe Lexa wouldn’t know how hard Clarke had fallen for her. So she played the game – their game – hoping that it would ground Lexa and herself, praying the husk in her voice didn’t give herself away.

“Now you.”

“What?”

Clarke tossed her head and offered a laugh. “Ask me a question,” she repeated her words from the night in the lab and felt nostalgic for something fleeting. But then Lexa was looking at her in a way she didn’t understand soft – loving – and it was giving her emotional whiplash.

“Favourite artist?”

“Stev’nn Hall.” Clarke traced the marbling on the tiles with a fingernail and watched the panic ease out of the brunette, imagined it oozing into the space between them, messy and ugly. Raw in a way that was wholly Lexa – uncut like she was making up for the secrecy and it soothed the hurt somewhat. “His landscapes are exquisite,” she hummed.

The resounding silence sat between them like a tangible presence that had Clarke traversing inches or continents to see the planes of slopes of Lexa’s face, the shadows and highlights, how the hem of her dress was crushed in her palm. And she wanted to desperately to sooth the creases away like she would flatten out a pocket-crumpled practice sketch, but suddenly, the thought of touching Lexa brought up unbidden consequences and second guesses so she fisted her hands in her own gown and dared herself to meet the verdant green of Lexa’s eyes.

“We were in an accident.”

It took too long for Clarke to realise what Lexa was talking about. “Lexa –”

“Two years ago. She was driving – took the brunt of it.” She tutted and tsked at herself, blinking against the fluorescent lights that didn’t lend themselves well to touching up makeup or self-soothing and Clarke wondered how many people were privy to this knowledge. Was this the first time in two years she was talking about it? “I got a mild concussion and my fiancée has been in a coma for two years.”

Things fell into place, shapes into their slots like a child’s game in her mind and Clarke didn’t know how to respond other than that Lexa looked caught in a space between coherence and light-headed panic and this – whatever this was, a purge, a confession – was calming the uneven undulations in her chest. It was worth it, she decided. Clarke would sit through the girl she loved talk about her fiancée because the thought of Lexa hurting hurt herself. “The chip,” she faux-realised, a small encouragement.

Lexa nodded, antsy fingers dancing. Her hair was so rarely fastened back fully like it was now, coiffed into an elaborate up do – sheer stubbornness, Clarke thought, because she was forever tucking strands back in distracted little movements – but now that it was, the blonde’s fingers _itched_ with the familiar sensation of wanting to pull a chestnut lock free, watch it curl on her index finger.

Then, Lexa was telling her everything.

How she woke up in the hospital, disorientated and disinfected, a uniform row of stitches at her hairline. How she had fainted when they told her the verdict after a week of living on stale sandwiches, sleepless nights and hospital coffee. Her understanding with the doctors, and how Costia’s condition deteriorating after her two years of self-imposed isolation that had dredged up fruitless results was the reason for her re-starting her work on the project that had been her life since high school – “It was the hospital that day when I had to leave the lab,” she said quietly, “they are, shall we say, not a fan of my pro-longed experimentation.”

She spoke about the girl who had interrupted them, and why Lexa had stiffened when she had slung herself on her arm, how she – Ontari – was the niece of Nia Queen, the CEO of the competitor who had been breathing down her neck since she started The Woods Corporation, and who was angling for a full-scale merger now that Lexa was “preoccupied” with her project, the result of which would dethrone Lexa and leave her with less than she had.

To Clarke – who had grown up to her father telling her a problem halved was a problem shared – it seemed like an impossibly large burden to bear, words spilling like a torrent that led irreversibly back to Lexa, backhanded threats and unfathomable deadlines, all of which must have sat like something debilitating on the brunette’s chest. Clarke didn’t wonder anymore about why Lexa Woods seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. Corporate diplomacy and board-room deals weren’t her forte, but Clarke was sure all of it was a weight she herself would die under.

“The doctors think I’m crazy,” Lexa admitted. “They say even when – _if_ – I come up with a working prototype for the bio stimulant, it won’t matter. Her condition won’t be alterable by then. They say it’s a waiting game.”

“Do you believe them?”  
“If you thought you could do something to save someone important to you, would you do it?

“I would have done anything to keep my father alive,” Clarke agreed, and the look washed over Lexa – something akin to unadulterated relief that made Clarke think for all her confidence and lofty words, that maybe Lexa Woods didn’t trust herself – held _weight_. “But that’s not a way to live.”

“You’d have me give up?”

“I’d have you do what’s best for you,” Clarke amended. “And her,” her mouth fitted around the words like they were a fabricated construction of her own grief – over her father, over _Lexa_ – not something she liked but necessary. “Sometimes letting go is the greatest kindness.” And it felt achingly wrong coming from Clarke Griffin who, four years later, was still clinging to her father’s chair at the dining room table like he would hand up his coat one day and wander in requesting his dinner, and she wasn’t sure if her reason for saying it was entirely selfless. But she had heard it from every therapist her mother had sent them – mainly Cal – to in the months after Jake’s death.

Lexa hummed like Clarke had suggested trying to restaurant two blocks down. She filed the thought into the place she kept things she didn’t like thinking of and Clarke looked at the way her eyeliner was smudged, a clinging, smoky ring around watery eyes and wet lashes that weren’t streaming. She was at peace, Clarke would say, a stagnant kind, more akin to resignation to calm if there was ever such a thing for her – for _them_.

Clarke cursed herself for letting herself be caught in those eyes.

“She used to take me to these things. When the company was finding its feet.” When Lexa spoke again it was with the nostalgia of a eulogy. She smiled, a small thing that made something ache in Clarke’s chest. Lexa’s smile was something precious and vulnerable in a way you wouldn’t understand until you received on and Clarke felt as blessed as she had the day the ill-tempered cat from the end of the street chose to sit in her lap at age seven. “There were so many events – securing investors and so forth – and I didn’t know how to handle it. But Costia grew up in this world.” Fond dropped to disgust as quickly as pain had given way to peace. “Now it’s like they remind me of how I’ve failed.”

“You haven’t failed,” Clarke said quietly.

Lexa barked a harsh, self-deprecating sound. It was so jarring that Clarke could almost feel the ground shock and it rang in her eardrums like a cruel middle school taunt. Lexa didn’t suit being this way, it sharpened her features into something that wasn’t kind. “I’m so messed up, Clarke, you don’t even know the half of it.” Clarke frowned and Lexa looked at her. She wet her lips. “Sometimes,” she whispered like a guilty secret or the lyrics to a sad song, “I feel like the world is moving forwards – everyone looking to new things and trying to pull me along but I’m wanting it all to stop so I can pretend my life hasn’t gone this far off the rails.”

Clarke snorted – now that, _that_ was something she could relate to, an inarticulate thought buried in the deepest part of herself.

“I feel that way every day,” Clarke whispered. “Like I want to crawl into bed and pretend my dad is here, and my sister isn’t in therapy twice a week and my mother isn’t pushing me somewhere I don’t want to be.”

“You don’t want to be a doctor?” Lexa guessed.

“I want to draw.”

“You’re an amazing artist, Clarke,” Lexa’s voice went soft, soothing and achingly genuine, like a lullaby. “You see people.”

“And you don’t?”  
Lexa pinned her with a pensive look and Clarke felt inexplicably stripped down – for the way the brunette’s eyes went like used watercolour when she cried, they were still of an intensity that Clarke felt like withering under. “Not in the way I want to. Not anymore,” she shook her head. “And not like you do.”

Clarke wanted to kiss her – gentle and sweet. Tangle her hands in falling chestnut locks and rake fingers down the slots of her ribs, trace the dip of her spine and the dimple she saw when Lexa had her back to her. The urge was something deep and primal and she hated herself for it because now was not the time. Because _Costia_. Costia, Lexa’s comatose fiancée who Clarke was helping bring back. Her situation is dizzying and – like Lexa said – she wanted the world to stop.

“Do you want to go back out?”

It seemed the best for her, because another second of being in a vacant bathroom with Lexa would lead to less non-platonic thoughts and more non-platonic actions and she couldn’t live with that. She would hate herself for making Lexa uncomfortable.

Lexa shrugged. “I don’t know if I can.”

“I’ll be there,” Clarke hummed, traversing continents to slide her hand, unbidden, into Lexa’s. She didn’t know where that came from but to snatch it back felt like it would be cruel so she felt fingers settle against each other, palms hot. “As a colleague, a friend, a – whatever. Whenever. We can do this,” she squeezed, “I promise.”

And she didn’t know what she meant, whether she was talking about the project, or themselves, or simply getting off the cold tiles and leaving the bathroom with their heads high, but when they walked into the ballroom, Lexa’s hand was still in hers.

She asked Lexa to dance when the music turned to something slow and intimate, wrongness brewed in her stomach but she could see the Icey-looking woman sneering at Lexa and _that_ felt even worse. Lexa jutted her chin and said yes, whispering _‘my hero’_ with that rare, precious quirk of lips.

 

**_LEXA’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Lexa didn’t sleep.

Sheets twisted around her legs, her left foot curled over the top of her shoved-back comforter, wearing a stretched out old Stanford tee and panties, she wondered where this all had come from.

She had been secure before. Hadn’t she? Secure in the knowledge that her days would be simple and the same, planned out in meticulous shorthand in her planner. That the company would be there and Titus would be worrying, and Anya would be fussing, and Costia would be at the hospital, and the barista at Grounders knew her order.

But then Clarke had come and twisted her about. Shaken her up like a child’s snow globe and the rest of her life had inexplicably followed.

Her head throbbed with the number of cocktails she had dosed up on after her panic attack in the bathroom, her nerve endings jangled with a loud kind of anxiety that drowsiness didn’t quell and her stomach knotted and everything was sticky and humid despite the fact that, at the beginning of May, the weather was pleasant. She scrutinised the white expanse of her ceiling with narrowed eyes.

Clarke had been so gentle when they walked onto the dance floor, hands timid like she was at her first middle school dance, and Lexa could tell it was because of what she had told her, through the tears and light-headedness she had seen the way Clarke’s own head had dropped when she talked about Costia. She had even wanted to sooth it away with attentive fingers and tell her that it wouldn’t change anything between them. _(Them_ , she mouthed it over, and over, like a comfort or a wish.) But it did change things, because Clarke was _so_ special, but likewise, Lexa couldn’t say that Costia didn’t matter. So, she had held her tongue and kept her hands to herself and said yes when Clarke had asked her to dance with the stupid hope that the feel of Clarke’s hands on her skin would stay after the song had ended.

And it did.

_God_ , she had been right, she was a mess. Messier than a mess. Somehow, without knowing, she had spun a web of lies and false truths that was so delicately complex that she hadn’t realised all she was deceiving was herself. She wondered if it was the alcohol that was sending her into this existential melancholy, then thought of water.

Lips pursed, she detangled herself, swinging her feet to the plush carpet of her room and stealing a light sweater from the chair in the corner to navigate the debris of her evening, her dress, unzipped in a puddle of expensive silk; her heels strewn haphazardly. There were bobby pins on the counter and her hair crunched with the hairspray she had used to get it styled but she resolved to leave it until the morning and filled a glass of water from the filter, taking it to the living room where the drapes were still open and Manhattan was still awake.

Her breath fogged against the glass, and she waited for something, for her headache to fade or the taste of dry martini to leave the back of her throat, or for a blinking celestial sign pointing to what she should do next. She had wanted to kiss Clarke earlier. She had wanted _more_ than to kiss her. She knew that much, but aside from that her thoughts were about as un jumbled as the traffic jams that would plague the city during the morning rush. She just didn’t know.

* * *

She was at the hospital early in the morning. The greying circles under her eyes expertly concealed along with her delicate complexion – she may have been influenced to have one more cocktail than she usually would after the bathroom with Clarke, but the blonde had been so attentive in keeping her comfortable that when she waggled her eyebrows and handed Lexa a technicolored drink the CEO hadn’t wanted to decline. She would live to regret that.

But the staff let her straight through the whisper of the automatic doors as she had called them on the way here in the car, giving Harper the day off to nurse the hangover she would likely have after doing shots at the bar with Monty from computing. And she was pettily happy not to see doctor Jackson on his rounds. He would go on at her about the chip and _‘letting go’_ , she had enough reservations about this without him being there to scare her off like a wounded deer.

“I met a girl, Cos,” she hummed with Costia’s hand in her own. Her skin felt paper thin, her veins blue at her wrist. Lexa tucked wisps of auburn frizz behind her ears and tsked like Costia would when Lexa turned up to her house frazzled and expecting to impress her mother. “She reminds me of you. She’s an artist. She sees the best in everything – _everyone,_ ” she swallowed, expecting the girl to sit up and talk back and every moment she did was a type of heartache she was guiltily growing tired of.  _'Enough is enough'_ Anya would say, but Lexa wasn't sure, all she was sure about was Clarke so she wet her lips and clasped Costia's hand tighter. "You'd like her," she decided, "I hope you'd like her. She's special, I think, different. She elevates herself." She traced the grooves of Costia's palm without looking, she didn't have to, she knew them off by heart. "Would you hate me if I said I liked her too?" 

 

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

 Lexa was happier the next Monday, Clarke thought as they walked, coffee in hand, to the company. She seemed to have recovered from her weekend hangover – Clarke remembered exchanging numbers tipsily over cocktails and waking up in the morning with Lexa’s number under _‘Lexy-Loo <3 <3 <3’ _in her phone, and Lexa texted her on the Sunday, short and sweet, telling her to cut her off next time at four martinis.

“I imagine Octavia and Raven went home nursing headaches,” Lexa hummed over the rim of her coffee cup.  
“I wouldn’t know,” Clarke replied honestly, “Octavia didn’t come home and Raven hid for the rest of the weekend,” she took a sip and savour the taste. “She likes to think she’s a heavyweight but I think she had a bruised ego, you saw her, she was one shot away from getting on the bar.”

“Her and Anya certainly hit it off.”

Clarke smothered a smirk, “yes they did.”

“So,” Lexa twisted her cup in her hand working up the courage, Clarke could see it, thoughts ticking over in her head and the muscles of her jaw like she would live to regret the words she said. “I went to see Costia yesterday.”

Which wasn’t what Clarke had expected, “oh?”

Lexa nodded. “Everyone tells me that she would want me to move on, and I feel like I should know her and what she would have wanted. But I don’t really – know what she would have wanted, that is – I know what I want – wanted. But it’s not clear anymore, and I’m,” her brow dipped delicately into the kind of frown Clarke itched to smooth away, “I’m trying,” she decided, imploring Clarke to understand and the blonde felt dizzy.

It felt too much for seven-thirty in the morning, unexpected in a way she didn't know how to deal with and she hadn’t even finished her coffee. She swallowed. “Thank you for telling me.”

Lexa nodded. They walked on with an easiness bridging the gap between them with conversation and thoughtless touches as Lexa held the door open and Clarke ducked under her arm. There was an intimacy to seeing someone at their worse, Clarke thought, which was maybe what had broken the sort of – not tension, Clarke would say, but cautiousness – that had kept Lexa’s word curated like whatever she said would later end up splashed on the front-page news and it thrilled Clarke a bit even though she was still so unsure where they stood.

Work in the lab was slow that day, as it was for the next month as Spring wheedled warmth out of the oncoming summer and Clarke began shedding layers as she walked to the subway in the mornings. If she thought that the stalemate they had been facing with their work would break like the caution between her and Lexa had she would have been entirely wrong because they were more stuck than before it seemed and the world turned, days eased on seemingly without a destination and Clarke felt stuck in a limbo she hadn’t experienced before. A strange sort of comfort, spending late nights with Lexa who would come in sometimes with un styled hair and glasses perched on her nose, perusing equations and running simulations they had tried and tried again. It was a feeling Clarke likened to careening towards a cliff at slow motion, at peace for now because the dreaded precipice was miles off, even if the knowledge that, at some stage, they would crack the code and Costia would wake up wasn’t. The work wasn’t rewarding, it was slow moving but not in a way Clarke disliked, it gave her time to breath and Lexa to process and had them sharing looks and a familiarity with each other she couldn’t say she was unhappy with.

May came and went and in the evenings Octavia would make to disappear out with Lincoln, neatly applying lipstick before their dates with a kind of energy she didn’t have when getting ready for parties, and Raven and Clarke would sit in front of the TV with takeout and tease her about the blush on her cheeks. It was nice for Clarke not having to usher her drunk friends inside of a Saturday evening, because god forbid the neighbours call their landlord – their landlord being Abby who Clarke was still navigating a highly dysfunctional relationship with. Regardless, she continued to attend Friday night dinners at home, under duress – mostly for Cal, because her sister hadn’t stopped back-talking at the watch incident and Abby was getting frustrated of receiving passive aggressive emails from teachers, kindly telling her to deal with her wayward daughter. More frustrating still, Clarke thought darkly, was the way Clarke refused to provide anything but evasive details about her work at The Woods Corporation.

“How’s work?” Abby would ask across the table, and Clarke would hum nonchalantly, making faces at Cal who looked bored and like she would rather be elsewhere. Clarke knew her mother was asking because she wanted to know whether Clarke taking the hospital internship was still a viable option, it irritated her to no end, the _assumptions_. So she would shrug and say _‘good’_ and when dinner was over she would take her dessert out onto the fire escape with her sister to watch the cars pass on the street, pale in the yellow streetlights.

“How’s Lexa?” Cal asked one night when work had been _slow_ – slower than usual – and Clarke could barely keep herself straight during dinner. The younger sister had her feet hanging over the edge, chest against the railing and that, Clarke thought, was a much more important question.

She laughed. “You’re spending too much time with Octavia,” she accused, brandishing her spoon. She hadn’t told Cal about Lexa per say, aside from the obvious, that she was working at The Woods Corporation and closely with the CEO herself, but Octavia had accompanied Clarke to dinner one day when the blonde was feeling particularly delicate and not up to dealing with her mother. She was sure Octavia had squirrel Cal away to spout nonsense about Clarke’s undying love for Lexa.

(Nonsense – she told herself. Painfully accurate – _everything_ else within her seemed to think.)

Cal carefully scraped her spoon around her bowl, licking apple pie crumbs, considering. Her hair got caught in the cross breeze. “I think Mom’s just pissed off that life hasn’t ended up following her plans,” she hummed, and Clarke turned to her, surprised by the wisdom the unassuming seventeen-year-old would spout. It was her therapist, Clarke thought, spend too much time around him and the girl would be psychoanalyzing everyone though she wasn’t sure Abby wouldn’t be happy about that. “Like nothing’s really going her way – with Dad, and you…she can’t handle it so she shuts off, yells.” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”  

“Eloquent,” Clarke teased, but her words hit a certain chord. She felt the metal of the railing fig into her back and thought about how Lexa had said something similar about herself the first time they spoke – really spoke. _‘Things lately haven’t been going the way I had planned them to,’_ she had said, in that soft curated voice that had made Clarke want to break the bonds holding her back. _‘And I’m not doing well with it.’_

Perhaps they – her, Lexa, her mother, her sister, _everyone_ – were not as different as they seemed. The same but different, joined by loss but swimming past each other, obvious because each thought their own tragedies were worse than the rest. Human beings, Clarke thought frankly, were utterly hopeless creatures. Metal squeaked beneath her as she shifting to lean against the railing and she brushed hair out of her eyes as she turned them to the sky, counting the stars in the cluster immediately above them. “You know what though?” she hummed.

“What?” Cal pursed her lips around her spoon and leant her head against Clarke’s shoulder.

“I think you’re probably right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is turning out to be a bit of a long ways in getting to clexa but it's not long, I promise. In fact things HAPPEN next chapter, like a lot of them. So thanks to anyone who is still reading, your comments and kudos mean a lot!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A discovery is made, Octavia demands a well deserved night out and lines are blurred further and faster than Clarke ever thought they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well it's been a hot minute - I'm SO sorry this took longer (like a month and a half) longer than anticipated but clexa week took over for a bit. Anyway, back to this.

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Lexa wasn’t at Grounders on the last day of May.

She texted Clarke that she was in the lab, that a coffee would be _‘greatly appreciated’_ and Clarke sent back a thumbs up. Their text correspondence since the gala was brief and impersonal, really, there wasn’t much to talk about because they saw each other every day Clarke didn’t have classes and scrolling through their conversations seemed little more than a regular boss-employee relationship. Which was strange for Clarke because it felt simultaneously so much more and so much less.

She felt like she had declared her feelings on the gala night in the bathroom, stripped herself raw for Lexa and laid down the facts. She felt like Lexa had done the same. But then they weren’t moving forwards now, and they weren’t moving backwards. It was easy and fun, and Clarke could have sworn they nearly kissed more than twice – despite how utterly wrong it would have been – but she didn’t _know_.

So, she picked up Lexa’s order, slipped it into the holder next to her own and considered the humidity as she wandered to the company, smiling at Lincoln in the lobby who she had come more accustomed to seeing on her apartment doorstep picking up Octavia than in his work suit and earpiece.

“Triple shot latte, extra-hot because someone hasn’t slept in two nights and needs a caffeine hit,” she breezed into the lab with a kind of faux-confidence that had almost become real, setting Lexa’s cup down beside the workstation the CEO had commandeered for the day, hair in a haphazard bun, glasses perched on the end of her nose like she was a student studying for college finals.

(Clarke knew. Clarke had _been_ there. Balancing things had become precarious, but her professors were wonderful and her roommates were a god send, picking up notes for her from missed classes and informing the blonde of office hours she could ask questions in. The result had been a successfully passed class and Clarke binge ate three tubs of mint-chip in sheer relief).

Lexa stood from where she was hunched over, interlocking her fingers to stretch out her stagnant muscles. “Thank you,” she hummed in appreciation, sinking into the warmth of coffee and, Clarke liked to think, the present company.

“So,” Clarke tucked her things away at her workstation and sidled over to Lexa’s, leaning against the bench to nurse of her coffee, seeing the way the CEO had the largest majority of her research thus fanned out over the desk, the computer, her tablet. She indicated with a head nod. “Dare I ask?”

Lexa fixed Clarke with a _look_ . “We should be getting this. Months of looking and we have nothing to show, for _any_ of it,” she gestured inarticulately. “There’s something we’re missing, and I don’t –” the sound she made was low and harsh and Clarke wanted to smooth it off, sand off the abrasive undertone so that Lexa wasn’t worrying, constantly stressing. She wanted to lean close and push her sagging glasses up her nose but her fingers wouldn’t obey here and instead they fell into her hand where it was lying on a stack of written notes and diagrams in Becca’s scrawl.

“Hey,” she soothed, “whatever we’re missing, we’ll find it. _You’ll_ find it.” She squeezed the fingers in hers, “you’re amazing Lexa.”

Lexa breathed, lips close, breath hot. Clarke jerked away in fright and Lexa swallowed. “Thank you, Clarke.”

Clarke hummed her _‘you’re welcome’_ and pressed her lips to the opening in her takeaway cup, hoping that her hair hid the way her cheeks were pink and that the action would give her something to focus on other than the way Lexa pushed her hair behind her ears and tugged her glasses off to smudge fingers over her eyes. She pinched her nose and Clarke frowned.

“The hospital called again yesterday.”

“Ah.”

That would explain Lexa’s absence at coffee, the way her hair wasn’t as immaculate as Clarke was used to seeing it at work and glasses Clarke hadn’t seen before – rounded, tortoise shell frames different from her sleek, business-like ones. The blonde found herself preferring these. “And they said?”

“Much the same.”

“They haven’t taken a hint?”

“Doctors rarely take a hint in my experience.”

Clarke thought of her mother, the hospital internship and her petty stretches of silence that culminated in nothing. She laughed. “Mine too.”

Lexa made a noise that was strangled and desperate, frustration clawing at her – little scratches stripping her down like a cat on a scratching pole and Clarke felt the primal urge to fix that had been hers since elementary school. Since the day she came home overwrought and crying because she tried to settle a petty friendship dispute between classmates and a boy had told her in no uncertain terms to _‘mind her own business’_ , a chilling insult that had cut six-year-old Clarke to the bone. Abby told her that night, when she had tugged on her mother's sleeve at bedtime, that some people want to fix their own things for themselves, and that wasn’t Clarke’s fault, but was within their right. She sobered and said she wouldn’t do it again but years later it was the same urge that had her following Lexa into the bathroom at the gala and dropping things to make sure her sister was okay. That had her returning home to her mother even though she knew the result would be frustration and scrutiny.

“Come on,” she decided, draining her cup. She dropped it in the wastebasket. “You need a break.”

Lexa shook her head, slipping her glasses back on, manicured hands returning to the keyboard. “A nice thought but I should keep going.”

“Lexa.”

“What?”

“You haven’t slept, you’re inhaling coffee like you don’t know what food is and you’re wearing your _‘at home’_ glasses.”

Lexa touched the rim, “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

“I noticed,” she sighed. “It’s seven-thirty and you’re already fed up, let’s go.”

“You want me to play hooky from my own company,” Lexa’s scepticism was a decided dampener on the situation but Clarke considered, pursing her lips and tilting her head so her hair fell around her ears. “Think of it as a _‘mental health hour’._ ” She slipped her hand into the brunette’s, soft palms, long fingers. Lexa scrambled for her phone, tucking it into the back pocket of her chinos – a stray from her usually immaculately pressed slacks – they were green-grey and her button down was untucked and Clarke tracked the movement of her hand from the bench to her back pocket. She shook herself free of the traitorous thought and pulled Lexa out of the lab.

The office was quiet in the mornings. It seemed that the stoic, hard working facade that Lexa wore had dripped down into the employee culture and those at their desks – early risers, all of them – didn’t register the nameless blonde intern tugging their CEO by the hand like a child at the zoo enamoured by animals, or a lovesick school girl escaping class, all giggles, hormones and unbridled possibilities. Clarke _felt_ like a schoolgirl. She never did this with her boyfriend’s but she remembered pulling Wells up to the jutty-out balcony at the back of the arts building to spend their lunch times philosophising before he transferred in sophomore year.

“Where are we going?”

Clarke quirked a brow. “Trust me.”

“You sound like a romantic cliché,” Lexa informed her, business-like.

“Oh really, Miss _‘P.S. I Love You’_?”

Lexa looked vaguely impressed as Clarke slipped into the employee break room, all sleek tables, metal countertops and glass windows. “Touché,” she hummed, smiling her smile. She let Clarke pull her onto the balcony. It was people less out here, the break room didn’t tend to fill up until eleven, just before lunch when people sipped coffee from the espresso and ate salads on the outdoor tables, not that Clarke had done it in her time at the company, her team tended to lunch on their own floor and work all day – the pressures of being on a time limit. But she avoided the tables still now and plonked herself against the railing, back against the glass, legs crossed. “Sit.”

“You have a skewed idea of taking a break, Clarke.” Lexa gave an eye-roll and maneuverered herself to the ground, carefully like she didn't want dust on her pants and crossed her legs to mirror Clarke, her back to the railing.

“My sister and I do this,” Clarke explained when she was happy Lexa was on board, she had her head tilted to the sky scrutinising the clouds. “We usually do it at night with stars but clouds work to – probably even better. It just happens that the stars are out when we finish the family dinners from hell and it’s a nice way to regroup.” She pointed at one sailing into their line of vision. “That one is a marshmallow.”

“It’s an amorphous blob.”

“It’s a marshmallow, Woods,” the last name felt rebellious, “your turn.”

“Alright,” Lexa sighed. She rose a hand to the oddly shaped cloud partially hidden by the spire of a nearby building. “That one’s a lobster.”

“Really?”

“From the side.”

“Okay.”

“Well it’s better than your marshmallow.”

Clarke giggled and felt it in her chest. She didn’t think she had giggled as much as she had in recent months with Lexa since Jake died. It was elating, sent something dizzy to her head like she was drinking too much oxygen.

“Unicorn,” she decided the next cloud.

“You’re very fond of your games, aren’t you?” Lexa asked, softer this time, it wasn’t teasing or judging, it came from a place of genuine interest that Clarke thought a lot of people had lost. She nodded and smiled. “I babysat my sister a lot when we were younger. She was a handful.”

Abby had even suggested they test Cal for attention deficit disorder one time but Jake talked her out of it, saying that she was ten-years-old and it was just her age. Clarke had found ways to keep her occupied anyway, making up games through long scholar’s dinners at the university or hospital fundraisers. She was the _‘I Spy’_ champion of the Griffin household to this day.

“It must run in the family,” Lexa hummed. Clarke turned to survey her face, watching the hint of mischief there she didn’t know Lexa had.

“Did you just sass me?”

Lexa only laughed and scrutinised the sky. Clarke, in turn, scrutinised her. The cut of her jaw and the highlight of her cheekbones and the little indentations on the bridge of her nose where she must have jammed her glasses on too hard and left them there. Beautiful, Clarke thought. As, if not more so, beautiful than the stars she would normally play this game with and just as far out of reach.

“I thought I could fly when I was younger,” Lexa said spontaneously when Clarke was thinking of a new topic of conversation. “I thought I was Superman – or Supergirl, rather. He didn’t have parents too and it seemed like the most rational answer.” It was the most she had told Clarke about her upbringing, about anything before the company’s beginnings really and the shock came like the warm knowledge that Lexa trusted her. Her chest sung as much as ached with the thought of a lanky adolescent Lexa being carted between foster homes.

“I would climb to the top of the rusty monkey bars in elementary and stand there with my eyes closed like an idiot. I slipped and fell once, but for a second I think it was the best thing I felt.” She picked at the thread on the hem of her untucked shirt, suddenly achingly self-conscious and Clarke wanted to wrap arms around her and hold her pieces together – _fix_ her. But then something else insisted that Lexa didn’t need fixing. She was brave and strong; the best person Clarke knew and she trusted that instinct more than the one that had gotten her kicked in the face in the third grade. “I was weightless,” Lexa hummed, “like for a second I didn’t have to hold myself together…Then I landed on the concrete and broke my arm in two places and that was that. Group homes aren’t partial to medical bills.”

“Weightless.” Clarke rolled the word over on her tongue and Lexa looked at her askance, enunciating her reply slowly, “yes.”

“No,” Clarke gasped, “ _weightlessness_.” Her mind spun, she shot to her feet, subconsciously patting herself down for something to explain – her phone, a pen – she shook her head. “What happens when we try to get the artificial blood proteins to bond with the test DNA?”

“The structure of the RNA falls apart,” Lexa recalled, “why?”

Clarke grinned, manic like a scientist. “What if we could get the artificial RNA binding in a zero-gravity environment,” she gesticulated wildly, unable to explain further because her mind was reeling with disconcerting speed to the edge of that cliff but this was the first breakthrough of her scientific life and the exhilaration was something she could use more of. The look Lexa was giving her – soft, sweet, wide eyed, something that she would have liked to say, _‘I love you’._

* * *

Clarke was right.

Without the burden of gravity, the structure of the RNA could form a bond that was structurally sound. _‘Density’_ Lexa explained running the simulations and equations, half on paper, half in her head in a display of intelligence Clarke felt flawed by. The density of the artificial blood was less than that of their human sample, or that was the layman's description. It irked Clarke that they hadn’t been able to figure it out earlier but, something so simple yet complex, like an _‘I Spy’_ puzzle only simple once you knew the answer.

But then, things were happening so fast she wasn’t left with time to contemplate.

She was hanging from a branch on the edge of that cliff, feet kicking, waiting for Lexa to pull her up while the brunette signed release forms and contacted contacts with astounding certainty and purpose and Clarke and the team worked in the lab to prep and test at their CEO’s behest. In a week, Lexa was going to the hospital with their positive findings, calculations and simulations, relishing her petition to a mildly surprised Doctor Jackson their findings, who agreed to take it to his superiors. Lexa was nothing if not pragmatic but Clarke’s stomach swooped with the knowledge that Costia would recover and the – misguided – thought that her place within Lexa’s sphere was tenuous at best, distress winding itself around her at the realisation.

“So, my birthday,” Octavia strutted into the living room one Monday in early June, sweeping her hair into a haphazard bun while Clarke was curling noodles around her chopsticks. The brunette wedged herself between Clarke and the arm of the couch, poking Clarke in the ribs. “We’re going out,” she declared.

Clarke blinked, “okay,” and Octavia threw herself against the cushions. “I’m serious,” she whined. “You haven’t gone out since you took the internship and your social life is flat lining.”

“Don’t be melodramatic, O, it doesn’t suit you.”

“Clarke, I live off melodrama,” the brunette scoffed, “you’re coming out.”

Raven snickered from the armchair, leg propped up on the coffee table.

“O,” it was Clarke’s turn to barter now. Her friend was right, her last night out had been back in the fall, before juggling the internship with school and Lexa. She doubted her body remembered the mechanics of clubbing like Octavia would have liked it to, let alone how to function whilst drunk like in the earlier years of her degree. She felt perpetually tilted, like she was standing on a Jenga tower prepped to collapse and she knew the fall would be hard, adding the threat of a hangover to the equation felt like possibly the stupidest idea ever.

“Clarke,” Octavia pouted unsympathetically. “Please, it’s my birthday, and Lincoln will be there, and Raven’s bringing Anya –”

“Is she?” Clarke smirked.

Raven flipped her off.

“She is,” Octavia nodded, oblivious. Clarke envied that of her, when Octavia wanted something she had blinders on until she got it, “and you can invite Lexa.”

The suggestion made her chest tight.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

 

**_GROUNDERS COFFEE CO. NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

She asked Lexa two days later when the CEO texted with a brief _‘meeting with Titus this morning. Grounders at lunch?’_ and she found herself tucked into their usual table, Lexa munching on a vegan salad in a trendy looking wooden bowl, Clarke picking the leafy garnish off her eggs benedict because breakfast was a luxury one indulged in when their roommate remembered to wake them up upon their alarm failing.

“This week?” Lexa queried, placing her fork across her bowl. Her phone vibrated – face down on the table – but she ignored it without thinking and the unconscious action of making time specifically for Clarke, dug itself into the blonde’s chest, rooting there with certainty. Emboldened, she nodded. “Thursday,” she explained. It worked out so that she didn’t have class on the Friday, _‘a weekend to recover’_ Raven had insisted. Clarke in turn, insisted there wouldn’t be anything to recover from, she intended to have her wits about her if Lexa accepted.

“And do you expect to be exempt from work the next day?”

Alarm coloured Clarke’s cheeks. “I –”

“I’m joking, Clarke,” Lexa assured her, “I’m sure it won’t be an issue.”

“So, you you’ll come?”

Lexa nodded graciously, “if you want me to.”

“I do,” Clarke smiled, slipping easily into the quiet between them. “Lincoln will be there too,” she added, “and, uhm, you’re welcome to invite Anya – for Raven’s sake, I mean.”

Lexa nodded and laughed, swallowed delicately with a hand over her mouth, “okay,” she agreed. “I’ll be there.”

“Good.”

Lexa smiled, dipping her head. “Good.”

“So,” Clarke scooped runny egg up with a cut slice of brown toast, trying for nonchalant interest but for the way her knuckles were white around her fork – telling a differing story the blonde hoped Lexa wouldn’t ask about. “How’s work?” It felt so wrong to ask, wrong in the same way as _‘how’s bringing your comatose fiancée back from the brink of death’_ did.

“Good, good. The hospital agreed –” Lexa made a comical face, “– reluctantly –” she added, “– but I’m waiting on a contact at NASA, for a confirmation of the use of their zero-gravity research centre in Brook Park. They’re being stingy with their information, which has put a spanner in the works, but –” she tipped her head and smiled as the waitress handed Clarke her latte – double shot, extra hot – “we’ll get there in the end. Becca tells me things in the lab are coming along well.”

“Double checking simulations feel easier when you have a purpose,” Clarke nodded. The CEO cocked her head and the blonde averted her eyes under the raw strength of her considering gaze. It wasn’t anything incriminating, Clarke liked being the object of Lexa’s attention but the cultivated understanding threw the blonde for a loop, she was sure the seams in her facade would begin to show and she wasn’t as well versed at curating as Lexa seemed.

“I feel like I’ve been at a loss lately without you,” the brunette admitted nevertheless, picking at her salad.

God, they were both horrible at this. It would be laughable if it didn’t set the tottering Jenga tower Clarke was standing on shuddering.

She left lunch for a late afternoon class feeling unsettled and brewing with an unstable energy that she likened to the beginning of the death of a star. He father told her one day that when a star dies it collapses in on itself after moments of unsteady upheaval to become a black hole, and more so than her Jenga tower or her cliff face, she felt like that star in its moment of collapse, thrumming on the verge of something wonderfully catastrophic – she just wished she knew what.

 

**_THE ARK, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

_“‘Ey, Jas, hook us up!”_

The base-beat echoed in her bones. It hammered at her chest and set the blood tingling in the tips of her fingers even more than the two Cosmo’s – more alcohol than juice – that Octavia had her down that stung her eyes and brunt her throat but made her feel alive.

The Ark – handily bartended by Jasper Jordan and Monty Green, their high school buddies and your friendly, local soft drug dealers –  was a trendy club over in Chelsea tucked down a street with a line out of the door and Clarke knew they only got in because Jasper slipped his sleazy boss a bag of weed a week before.

They had been there for over an hour by now – maybe two – having pre-gamed at home, in the cab, at four clubs before this and Clarke was comfortably drunk, enough that the close press of bodies and the sweat clinging to the nape of her neck didn’t bother her. The only thing that did bother her was how put together Lexa looked after an hour and a half of standing room only and two technicoloured cocktails a la Monty. She had given Lexa the address of the first bar they were starting at, a quieter place not far from their apartment and Lexa had stepped out of the backseat of her car – Gustus driving – in a form-fitting black romper, short sleeved, shorter legged, stiletto’s toning the muscles in her thighs and hair undone. It was such a contrast to the regal elegance of the company gala, not as revealing as something Octavia would wear on a night out – the girl was all silk and spaghetti straps and hooking up in bathrooms before Lincoln – but it was enough that Clarke was scooping herself up off the sidewalk, jaw-dropped, to greet the brunette with a hug, figures sifting over the soft fabric of her romper and smelling the exotic perfume when Lexa tossed her head.

 _‘Hi,’_ Lexa had tugged at the hem of her romper, suede clutch in her hand like she wasn’t comfortable stripped of her armour of her Armani power suits – the tailored suit jackets and pencil skirts of her midtown high rise. She looked every bit the young-twenty something she was and it thrilled Clarke in a way that was heady and dangerous.

At the bar, Jasper lined up two rows of shots, vodka, salt, beer chasers, tapping the surface then wiping a spill down with his rag. He jerked his head to Octavia, “you’re up,” and the brunette dragged Clarke over squealing. Downing her shots in a row, she watched Clarke down hers, throat burning eyes stinging, clasping her hand when the blonde had turned the three glasses over with a victory cry.

_“We’re back bitches!”_

The atmosphere split and the bass dropped.

It was the best night out Clarke thought she had had in her life, a needed catharsis of months of pent up effort with her hair down and a tight dress and unknown bodies on hers. Through the kaleidoscope of churning colours and people Lexa was tucked into a booth talking to Lincoln, riding a pleasant buzz and sipping on a whiskey sour topped with a curled lemon rind. Lincoln gesticulated in a grand gesture, Lexa took a sip and their eyes met in a moment of stop-starting movement that had the blonde pursing her lips around the lingering film of vodka on her tongue. Her head swum and the pit of her stomach burnt with an uncomfortable kind of pressure that had come with the loss of Finn and certain _activities._ Raven, crude as she was, would tell her she needed to get laid. And even half-drunk Clarke could acknowledge the mutual benefits of having a sexual partner versus masturbating in the shower with two roommates ready to poke fun.

She shouldered her way through the dance floor to tangle sweaty hands with Lexa and pull the brunette into the centre of the room, shooting an apologetic look at Lincoln – though the place where Lexa sat was quickly replaced with Octavia and the security guard smiled as his girlfriend settled in his lap. He whispered happy birthday behind the thick curtain of hair tossed onto her right shoulder.

Lexa’s shoulders were tight, her hands were stiff, cold in Clarke’s, and when the blonde gave her a tug she stumbled a little in her heels – tipsier than Clarke thought.

 _“Clarke,”_ she scolded, hiding her face in the blonde’s shoulder.

Feeling rebellious, Clarke ran her hands over Lexa’s arms, up her shoulders, back down to follow the point of her elbow and the dip of her wrist after the bone. “Loosen up,” she hummed in vibrations across the arch of the brunette’s cheek.

Lexa shook her head. She was smiling, Clarke thought. It was hard to tell – the lights and the music, the buzzing in her fingers and the aching in her stomach burnt made things fuzzy. She was swaying from the alcohol and dizzy from the proximity and thoroughly unable to be making good choices but Lexa _was_ smiling, she decided with a happy nod to herself.

“I don’t do this very much,” Lexa admitted.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Clarke teased.

“I’m sorry.”

Lexa flushed easily like this – easier than she already did unhinged by whisky sours and questionable looking cocktails.

“No, it’s okay, I like it.”

The bass-beat rose, crescendo like, echoing in their bones with a kind of untapped potential. Chaos raged around them, seething and writhing, Clarke could feel the heat of Lexa’s breath on her cheek and the warmth of her body close. Her hands tingled, her heart beat, things kaleidoscoped in and out of view like the world was distorted through a house of mirrors – nothing concrete except the heady knowledge that the brunette’s arms were hanging over her shoulders and her mind couldn’t cope.

Someone jostled Lexa from behind, she jolted forwards, their lips brushed, her eyes flew open. The blonde could feel the intake of breath and the heaving rise and fall of her chest, the way Lexa’s fingers danced nervously at her back.

“Do you want to go?”

Clarke didn’t think she had agreed to anything faster in her life.

* * *

It was amazing what dopamine and blurred inhibitions could do to the brain.

Clarke remembered when she was younger, asking her mother why people drunk if they got headaches the next day and Abby replied because the chemicals the alcohol released make you feel good. Now, lips locked, fingers tangled in hair, Clarke decided that _‘good’_ wasn’t nearly apt enough. It was heady and paralysing, an exquisite kind of terror that rattled in her chest and made her fingertips tingle.

Their cab arrived fast at Lexa’s behest and the brunette pulled herself from the kiss long enough to give directions to the disgruntled driver and toss her credit card into the front seat before her fingers were back fisting in the curls at the nape of Clarke’s neck and Clarke was pressing into the brunette, the seat-belts forgotten too early to even keep up a pretence.

It might have been the vodka talking but Lexa was beautiful, more so now – tipsy in her short, short romper and high, high heels, messy and open – than she was in pressed slacks and cut business attire, or crouched on the bathroom tiles at the gala. Their kiss was a desperate push-pull of flushed palms and hot mouths, clashing teeth and messy hair. If she was thinking, Clarke would pull back and question Lexa’s motives. She knew her own well enough, had known them from the moment their eyes met in the elevator, but she didn’t want to be a dalliance or a means of escape, not with the project progressing and the possibility of her fiancée’s better health.

But she wasn’t thinking, neither was Lexa she suspected. Months of pent up tension and late nights had resulted in the taste of salt on Lexa’s lips and something fruity on her tongue and the slow rock of the brunette’s body against Clarke’s that was doing wild, unthinkable things, so she bit her tongue and let Lexa slam the plastic partition of the cab closed.

They pulled up to a residential high-rise near Bryant Park ten minutes later – all floor-to-ceiling glass, straight lines and so incredibly Lexa – and tipped themselves onto the sidewalk, yellow door slamming, giggling and tipsy, hands in hair and pulling at clothing. Thank god, Clarke thought because the ache between her thighs was getting insatiable and something had to give.

It was the barest dregs of common sense that kept them from shucking clothes off through the lobby, and the elevator was idling when Lexa thumbed the button, the doors sliding closed again when the brunette smacked the button on the inside, giving Clarke enough leverage to crowd her against the mirrored back wall. She fingered the zipper of Lexa’s romper, clawing at the fabric and urging it down her shoulders, the fervent need to feel skin on her skin something hot and urgent.

It hadn’t been like this with Finn, the thought rang somewhere in her distracted mind. It hadn’t even been like this with the girl she slept with in her senior year because Abby was hounding her and she was feeling rebellious. The need to feel Lexa against her was one she would sort alongside the human body’s need for food and water, it was dangerous and would consume her if she indulged it too freely, but she wasn’t aware. She wasn’t aware of anything except for the heat of Lexa’s chest as the elevator signalled its stop on their floor and the brunette’s romper fell down her front, revealing a plunging lacy, black bra and the thought of Lexa pre-preparing had Clarke ready to pass out.

She backed them out of the elevator instead, sucking bruises into Lexa’s neck, into an apartment swathed in the shadows cast by a city floors below. It must have been two, at least, she mused. Octavia would be happily drunk, leaning on Lincoln, Raven and Anya clinched in the corner. Would they have realised they were gone?

The moment’s consideration was enough for Lexa to flip them and press Clarke against the expanse of wall in the entryway and kick and knee between her legs, hands pulling and needy. Her head knocked the wall, the impact jarred the breath out of her and with a sudden, violent yearning for air, she pressed a light hand to Lexa’s bare sternum.

The brunette stilled, hands in Clarke’s hair, breath tickling her the blonde’s cheek. Clarke watched the way her chest heaved under the exertion of the action of holding back, she felt the way her fingers trembled. The fabric of her romper was shucked down to her waist where it bunched like it would fall with the lightest pressure, her pupils were blown, two lines of red burnt high on the arches of her cheeks and in the backlight of the moon, the frazzled wisps of hair at the crown of her head hung like a halo – ethereal.

She smoothed a lock of hair over the sweaty skin of Lexa’s clavicle in an effort to quell abhorrent feeling trying to crawl up her throat – the thing that told her _‘no’_ because it was the thing she had been listening to since Jake died and it hated it. _‘No’_ to art school because med school might make her mother be a mother again, _‘no’_ to Finn because he was Raven’s and even then, not even.

Hands slipping under either side of Lexa’s jawbones, she pulled their foreheads together.

“What about Costia?”

She hated the sad, ugly thing that marred the first actual pleasure she had seen in Lexa’s eyes.

“For tonight,” the brunette begged, pulling and pressing like a child nosing into its blanket, “can’t we just…pretend?”  

“Okay,” Clarke whispered against the highest point of Lexa’s cheek. She stilled the girls trembling lip with a curled knuckle and breathed. “Okay.”

Never had such an inconsequential word held so much impact.

The syllables had something bursting inside her, something hot and hungry. Sobering, Clarke felt Lexa parting the button at the top of her dresses zipper with her fingernails, clawing the zip down with a kind of raw desperation she didn’t have it in her to be scared of because she felt it too.

The plush mattress of Lexa’s California king gave under her back. She kicked her heels off, urged her dress past her hips and sighed at the cold pull of the brunette’s hands against her stomach, blindly pulling her forwards with flexing fingers and flushed cheeks. She relished the sound when she sucked Lexa’s bottom lip into her mouth and skated her hands over the other girl’s body, mapping the dips and curves of her chest, the ridges of her stomach, the twin points of her hips under the thin layer of intricate lace. If she was feeling destructive she would have clawed at the lace until it gave, but then Lexa pressed a thumb to her clit, index finger teasing and Clarke was lost in a word of hot pleasure. Dizzy, she hooked a leg over Lexa’s hip, anchoring hands at her shoulder blades where she could feel the deep flex and give of her muscles.

“Lex – uh,” her breath shorted in her chest, “ _please_.”

She hissed at the stretch when Lexa added a second finger, then sunk into the rock of their hips, the taut arch of her back against the mattress, the ache pulled like a bow-string in the pit of her stomach that burst a second later with a shudder and a sigh. Her head hit the mattress with a heavy thud, she clung to Lexa’s shoulders and slid a knee between her thighs.

This was dangerous, her mind cautioned with the slick slide of skin, it was a tenuous thing like a controlled blaze that was viable to combust as soon as the oxygen got too much, leave them breathless and gasping, bearing smears of ash like war paint across tear streaked cheeks and debris in the fractured expanses of their re-stitched hearts.

But, like collision theory and the cacophonous symphony of a third-grade orchestra, she believed wholly in its potential to be beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known that I should never write smut. Also, sorry not sorry.  
> Come talk to me on tumblr if you want ([@that00show](https://that00show.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading! Comments and kudos appreciated!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa’s morning after is less than ideal for more reason than one and Nia makes a threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this took longer than expected but I've had this chapter planned since the beginning and it's a bit of a turning point so I wanted to make sure it read properly.

**_LEXA’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

She woke up with the all-encompassing heat of Lexa’s body on hers and in a fleeting moment between heartbeats, Clarke was still pretending.

Her head felt stuffed with cotton wool – fuzzy like television static and, she decided, the aftertaste of vodka was nowhere near as good as it was the night before.

She stretched, feeling the easy slide of Egyptian cotton against her skin and the tickle of Lexa’s hair on her collarbone. She rolled over under the limp weight of the arm slung over her bare waist watching the slow undulation of the brunette’s chest from where she lay on her stomach, other hand curled into the pillowcase, seeing the way the sputtering sunlight ran in ridges across the smooth expanse of her back. She traced the dip in Lexa’s spine and smiled.

But then the comforter slipped of the edge of the bed and the clinging, clawing weight of unwanted regret threatened to strangle her. A ominous _‘thud-thud’_ in her head that made her want to retch.

This was so wrong. What they were doing – the lunches, the texts, the coy smiles and soft touches – it made the acrid taste of guilt crawl up her throat like she might be sick because no matter what it couldn’t change the fact that she was irrefutably in love with Lexa.

She swallowed, shimmying out from under the soft weight of the brunette’s arm. She couldn’t be there when she woke up, the regret in Lexa’s eyes would shatter her and despite all of her faux-bravado she had had with alcohol on her tongue and Lexa’s hands on her.

There was a thick sweater slung across the chair in the corner. Incredible, Clarke thought, that it wasn’t creased, it was pressed and smooth despite the obviously careless treatment and the blonde wondered if anything in this would could touch Lexa Woods. The girl was a deity unto her own. A beautiful dichotomy of soft touches through tortoise shell glasses and the hard lines of her midtown skyrise and she didn't think Lexa understood herself, let alone gave the gift of understanding to others.

Except maybe to Costia.

Except maybe to her.

The wool was cool against her skin as she pulled on the collar, turning her nose into the frizzing neckline, bare toes curling against the hardwood flooring. There was a glass on the side of the sink, water marks ringing the edges, she weighed it in her hands as she pressed it to the fridge and watched it fill, heart beating in her chest. She felt dizzy and uncertain – out of her element was not something Clarke wanted to be right now, not hungover and vulnerable and wearing her bosses – lovers? – sweater.

A phone rung through the taut silence, loud, like a screeching banshee and Clarke jumped away from the fridge, water sloshing in hand, made up of guilt and aching bones.

It wasn’t a cellphone, she decided – which brought up the better point of where was _her_ phone? – a landline most likely but it was coming from everywhere and nowhere and Clarke’s temples throbbed with the intrusive noise too much to go in search of it. She doubted she’d know what to do when she found it anyway.

The ringing ended and the message tone sounded, a familiar voice hounding the voicemail in harsh words Clarke couldn’t make out, she rubbed her forehead and sipped her water, thinking of gathering her things, assessing her exit. Her clutch was tossed carelessly over the arm of the sprawling _‘L’_ sofa, she remembered losing her dress over the wrong side of Lexa’s bed, her shoes in the doorway.

_“Where is it?”_

Clarke started.

“Hm?”

“My _phone!”_ Lexa – in a clean, white blouse, miss-buttoned, collar skewed – hurtled into the living room like a hurricane, anxiety clawing at the terse set of her shoulders. The muscles of her thighs flexed under the hem of her shirt, movements short and angry, as frenzied as a madwoman. It made Clarke swallow, heart racing.

“What?”

“My cell phone, _Clarke!_ My _fucking_ phone!” She clawed at the pillows of the sofa, kicking the throw rug, fisting her fingers so her nails cut into her palms. “Where the _fuck_ is it?” She wouldn’t look at Clarke and there was something in the hard bob of her throat, the blonde was sure. But she wouldn’t lie – she was scared and unsure and her head spun too fast to watch the way the brunette moved like a natural disaster full of pent up tension and anxious energy. It was the most out of control Clarke had ever seen her. The first time she had heard her utter an expletive in the now six months she had known the CEO and the slipping grip Lexa had on the strings that kept her together in that moment froze her in her spot as Lexa shoved the clutter off the kitchen island, papers flying like birds and descending like snowflakes – work documents and medical reports, Clarke tried not to read the neat _‘Patient Costia St. Clair’_ in the header. She backed into the fridge, cool metal seeping through her – Lexa’s – sweater like the unease dripping down her spine. “I don’t know –”  

But the CEO disappeared down the hall again with an inarticulate noise, stalking back into the room with clinging, dark wash jeans on, Clarke’s dress in her hands, heels hooked on her fingers, picking over the clutter on the floor for her clutch.

“The table?” Clarke supplied, setting her glass on the island to crouch by the mess, conscious of the way the sweater rode up over her thighs and back, feeling cold and at ill-ease. Lexa dropped the heels in her hand to stand up, they landed on the hardwood with twin _‘thunk-thunks’_ that burned in the shell of Clarke’s ears, and snatched the black clutch off of the table, angrily pulling at the flap to free her phone.

“Lexa, what’s wrong?”

_“Fuck.”_ The syllable was short, choked out through sand paper. A horrific sound Clarke equated to a heart wrenching and she reached forwards, fingers grazing the cool fabric of the brunette’s shirt before Lexa recoiled in horror, pulling her arm away, stoney faced in a way Clarke thought was worse. “Are you –”  

“Go, Clarke.”

“Lexa –”

_“Clarke!”_

Her balled up dress hit her chest with the force of a semi-truck. She breathed in – a short gasp that caved in her lungs as Lexa’s fingers lingered on her sternum for too long, keeping the creased slip of black fabric there with the strength of the gaze they held. Something firm but intangible, viable to break.

She knew it would happen. The aching premonition in her stomach when she woke up to egyptian cotton sheets and the smooth curve of Lexa’s back had told her this would be their downfall, but she was hungover and vulnerable and so utterly confused about what had happened – too hopeful to entertain the idea Lexa regretted _them_ this much – that it was all she could do not to take Lexa’s hands and hold them tight to her chest.

_“Please,”_ Lexa breathed.

And Clarke liked to think of herself as strong, but in the face of that word, she never felt weaker.

 

**_NEW YORK-ARKADIA HOSPITAL, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

The hospital was white, sterile in the eight a.m. half-light, and when Lexa hit the receptionist on the way in, winding herself on the stomach-height ridge of the front desk, the spectacled woman’s expression was dire. She recognised her – not quite the pressed business woman, quick-tongued with documents in hand that strode into reception like a woman on a mission, but a realer, smaller, more scared version of herself, skewed shirt and searching her face for her denial of the worst. A denial the receptionist couldn’t give her.

“Lexa! Where have you been?”

Lexa turned from the woman’s steady gaze, finding Anya in the corridor, features sharp, cheekbones casting shadows on the lower half of her face. Her tailored coat was thrown on her shoulders, over the strappy outfit she was wearing the night before, heels pressing dents into the speckled linoleum with its clinical feel that made repulsion crawl under her skin. She looked straight from the club, from the shadows in her face she hadn’t slept and Lexa’s stomach dropped to an uneasy place. She thanked the receptionist and strode to meet the blonde.

“Where is she?” The brunette snatched her hands away when Anya went to catch her instead of talking, agitation winding itself into her spine and when she realised the older girl wasn’t going to answer she barrelled past the pacifying hands and pleas that were so unlike Anya and her no-nonsense manner, it only perpetuated the trickling dread. “I said, where _is_ she?”

“Lexa –”  

Lexa crossed through the swinging double doors bridging the waiting room and the corridor, feeling Anya on her heels. There was an entourage of white-coated specialists outside of Costia’s room. Seven missed calls burned a hole in the pocket of her jeans and anxiety clouded her chest, swelling in her throat like a balloon. She faltered – _this isn’t real_ – and Anya caught her, the skin of her palms burning the insides of Lexa’s wrists, nausea slipping over her like the fingers of a cold shadow, fusing her bones so they were paralyzed, her pleas to _‘let go’_ cracking in her chest.

“I called you,” Anya said. Lexa shook her head, mind filling with images of herself – tipsy and half-dressed – flinging her clutch onto the dining room table, kicking off her heels with a kind of recklessness she would have it in herself to envy if she wasn’t so disgusted. Was this what dying was? The heavy nothingness, thoughts chasing thoughts but nothing clear like a sandstorm barrelling against the walls of her head? If so, it felt like resignation, and guilt, and awful acceptance that whipped her stomach into the state of a roiling sea.

“I didn’t have my phone.”

She couldn’t hear the words from her own mouth, nor the way the older girl stroked thumbs of her wrists, face contorting. When she spoke, Lexa watched the tips of her hair sway, brittle like the twigs on a scorched tree.

“I’m sorry Lexa.”

“No.”

“They said they called you.”

Darkness sloshed inside her head. “No,” she shook, winching desperation into herself with each flex and pull of her wrists, “you’re _lying.”_

“It happened this morning.”

Exertion pull the cords of Anya’s neck, strain in the tendons of her wrists, struggling in short jerks like she was reigning in an inconsolable child and Lexa wanted to crawl back to that day – the day they took her out of her first group home. The double storied house with a sloping roof and a sun-bleached garden to an apartment in Inglewood where the planes took off. Her social worker was a no-nonsense type — like Anya — with plain clothes and a perpetual down-tilted brow and when Lexa — six-years-old and too serious — refused to extract herself from the backseat of the old Sedan she had struggled so much in the woman’s hands that she had bruises around her wrists. She felt so much then like she did now, the same hopelessness filled her, dark and bleak like the world had lost its colour to the subdued grey tones and she wondered if Costia had been the only thing keeping it away.

“She flat lined,” Anya hummed quietly, sharp features turned into a mirror of grief Lexa was sure she was reflected in.

“Anya.”

“Lexa, they tried, I’m sorry –”

_“Stop!”_

It happened in a slug sort of slow motion that wove itself into her bones. Anya’s fingers snapped off of her wrists and her feet skidded, her back colliding with the whitewashed wall, then her head so that a cry chewed itself off of her lips and her chest felt like it was caving in on herself. Tears stung her eyes, a clinging film in her lashes and smouldering like acid as she turned a gaze of the highest betrayal on Anya. If she could have sunk into the floor and the idea of secure nothingness she would. But then Anya was coming towards her, arms out to envelop her in a hug and reality snapped back to life like a rubber band. She watched the desperate exasperation in the blonde’s eyes, heard the gust of air leaving her chest. “This isn’t your fault, Lexa.”

The words felt thick on her tongue and thin in her throat. “This isn’t my fault.” Anya nodded but Lexa shrugged her off, aggression building where she thought grief should be. There wasn’t a manual for this, there wasn’t a rulebook for the weight on her chest and the volatile fists in her mind, there wasn’t anyone telling her how to live without Costia because what she had been doing for the past two years wasn’t living, it was surviving and barely that – before Clarke anyway. “Do you _know_ where I was, Anya?”

“Lexa –”

“No,” she pushed herself off the wall, rallied shoulders and uncut anger, “do you know where I _fucking_ was?” Anya was silent. “I was with _Clarke_ .” Just the admission felt simultaneously like a dirty sin and something so sacrosanct it made her head reel. “I was with another woman while my fiancée was dying and you’re standing here telling me this is my _fault?”_

“You're fiancée has been dying for two years, Lexa. That isn’t on you.”

“No,” she swallowed, vibrating with the extent of her grief as denial sank deeper into her, “no, you’re wrong."

She shouldn’t have gone with Clarke.

The nagging in the back of her head tell her she should have cancelled when Anya did so because of an emergency in the office should have won out. She shouldn’t have been _there_ . She shouldn’t have done _that_.

She should have been _here_ but she wasn’t and her head sun with the desperate need to get out.

* * *

 

Lexa wasn’t a religious person, an early foster mother with a penchant for tussling her into peter-pan collars of a Sunday morning had ensured that. It felt hard to believe in something so intangible when your belongings fitted in a trash-bag and science felt logical in a way rote learnt bible verses didn’t.

But still, the chapel – tucked into a lower floor of the hospital – was the only place the world didn't spin. The only place the walls didn’t ooze with condolences that burnt the inside of her head so that she felt wrung out and gutted and she slid into a pew with clasped hands and straight posture to watch the weak morning sunlight die behind the stained-glass windows. Her eyes stung and she wanted to cry.

There was a woman on the left of the first set of pews, head bowed in a gentle slope of her neck. She had flowers on the wafty material of her blouse and a peaky complexion that settled the effects of grief into the sharpening slant of her cheeks. For all of her seeming fragility – her shoulders curved like aluminium under the weight of her mind – the woman looked at peace with her eyes pressed and her hands clasped and, feeling like a child, at a loss for her actions, Lexa copied.

The AC thrummed in the air vents, her heart beat in her chest.

Surely, she should be able to feel it? The _‘it’_ they said came with loss? The gaping searing mess in your chest like that person has taken the part of themselves that you used to piece yourself together?

She should have felt it, but as she pressed her hands together all that was left was the numbness that came with a healed over scar and a spreading anger at herself for not feeling the right kind of grief. The kind of grief that eats you up and makes it hard to breathe, because right now she was struggling to breathe for a different reason and her nails dug crescents into the outside of her knuckles as the room grew small. She felt four years old, clad in black from Goodwill and trying to mourn a mother who was never there.

They called her _‘unusual’_ when she didn’t cry. They gave her crayons in a room that was painted egg-shell blue, but after two sessions the woman who asked her questions and hummed at her stilted answers shook her head and they didn't take her back.

Blinking, Lexa saw Costia in the dying stained-glass light. Costia in the sun flares of the polaroid lens Lexa had bought for herself with earnings from waitressing. Costia on the sun-bleached streets in her too-new clothes and cocky smile, with sand in her shoes on Venice Beach, tracing the thick graffiti-ed lines of street art with her nails. The warm press of bodies, the spread splay of fingers on her back. The breath in the hollow of her throat, the tug of hair at the roots finer, under fingers, lips sloppier under mouths –

Lexa stood with an abruptness that startled the dust off the back of the pews, the feeling that washed over her so visceral she felt the hairs of the back of her neck rise, felt her heart tremble against her ribcage with the weight of the realisation. It had come as a shock. A deep, lurching shock that shook the entirety of her tectonic plates and sent the cavernous web of lies she had built – brick and mortar – collapsing to the earth.

She had fallen out of love with Costia – she had fallen _in_ love with Clarke.

She wondered if it was possible to be in love with two people at the same time.

She didn’t think so.

(But before Costia she didn’t think it was possible to be in love with anyone).

 

**_CLARKE’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

As unkempt as she was with last night’s dress hanging oddly off her shoulders and the smell of sex clinging between tousled locks of hair, the mess of her appearance was the least of her worries as she slipped through the lobby of her building – heels hooked onto her fingers having pried them off in the cab.

She felt delicate, paper-thin like the crafted white-bone china figurines that side on the sideboard at her grandmother's house. When she was young and would visit her Upstate, Clarke would lay her chin against the wood and trace the outlines of them with her eyes, build them up like something sacrosanct. The curtseying lady in her verdant green ball gown was a deity unto herself until Cal broke her one day in a fit of unbridled anger about being deprived of a summer without her first-grade friends and she feels like that now.

No longer a goddess basking in the glow of Lexa and unbridled want, but a yellowing china figurine with a crack where her chest should be.

Raven would tell her to stop being so melodramatic.

She adjusted her dress as she entered the elevator, clutch pinched under her arm, and waved to Lincoln in the hall with the dim acknowledgement that Octavia must have gotten her birthday wish. The man was worse for wear but upright so she supposed the night had treated him well. He hummed a gentle, _‘hi, Clarke,’_ and Clarke returned the sentiments.

Octavia was there when he banged through the door, pantless in an oversized hoodie and morning hair. Raven slept on the sofa. Clarke threw her shoes down by the entrance where the heels cracked against the wall, her clutch went onto the kitchen island.

“Clarke,” Octavia called, voice aching in her skull as she curled her hands around her ceramic coffee mug. “Abby called, she said your phone was turned off…”  

But Clarke was crossing the threshold of her room and slamming the door, sinking to the foot of her bed and waiting for her chest to concave. The silence was stagnant – thick and heavy as Octavia’s footfalls in the lounge fell silent. Heat burned behind her eyes that she refused to recognise as tears.

What had they done? Were they both self-destructive enough to believe they could work? Her stupidity in the face of her intimate knowledge of the situation made her head spin and so that she didn’t see Octavia slip through the doorway and eased herself to the floor, bleary-eyed and blinking against a hangover for which shots were the likely culprit. Clarke wished she had indulged in more of them last night, if only to blur the mess in her chest to something equating the manageable throb in her temples.

The brunette smelt like Lincoln when she sat down and pressed her back to the foot of the bed, mug resting warm against her stomach. She offered it to Clarke but the scent was nauseating and the blonde waved it away.

“You left early last night,” Octavia hummed into the half-quiet, “Rae and I though you and Lexa might have,” she gestured inarticulately.

“Don’t.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Contorting to reach behind herself, Clarke tugged the zipper of her dress to expose her back and sat back down to quiet her head, “and there isn’t a Lexa and I,” she informed her friend coolly. “Not anymore.”

“Oof,” the brunette winced, “was the sex that bad?”

“She kicked me out,” Clarke grunted.

“I’m sure she didn’t mean –”  

“It’s fine, O,” Clarke decided, “we were drunk, it doesn’t matter.”

But even as she spoke the words twisted uncomfortably inside she so that she didn’t think they would make it past her lips. She wanted to yell, rage and hit things because as much as she tried, as much a she pushed and prodded at herself she couldn’t make herself hate Lexa. Even when she convinced herself otherwise.

In her mind, there were two Lexa’s – the cold, impassive, corporate CEO that the media portrayed versus the gentle girl she knew who kissed her with her hair down and who’s breath hitched when hands were on her. And they were so achingly different when she struggled to consolidate the two, like puzzle pieces that refused to click.

Dizzy and aching, Clarke pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until sparks popped on her eyelids and Octavia watched her, thinking maybe, it did matter after all.

 

**_LEXA’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Lexa wandered.

For a day, she traversed the city with a coat shrugged around her shoulders because although early June had New York thrumming with escaping heat, her bones felt cold. She had ignored the call from Harper that set her phone buzzing in her pocket, then, shortly after the one from Titus she could feel the urgency rolling off.

It felt petty – it felt good. Titus needed to learn to take heed. She held down the off button and swiped the screen to power to device off before slipping it back into her pocket and into the back of her mind. Everything felt numb, like her skin was scrubbed raw and stripped of life. Her fingers felt cold where she wrapped them in her fists and tried to unpack the loaded guilt that blurred her mind and sat on her chest, complicated because she thought it was as much guilt about not being the right kind of upset as it was guilt about her death. But whatever it was it was debilitating, stealing the air from her lungs and the sanity from her head. It whined in her ears and turned her heart to lead, she didn’t know how much longer she could bear it.

Especially because no matter how long she walked for, her feet following the same circular path of her mind – a tape on a loop – it all came back to one thing.

Especially when that one thing was the feeling of lips on hers and the cool press of bodies, neither of which belonged to Costia.

Especially when the thought made her rattle with guilt and something softer she refused to acknowledge now because even the formation of the word in her mouth felt like a betrayal that ached in her bones. God, she was awful at this.

Her doorman barely acknowledged her when she dragged herself in, unkempt and windblown, with last-night’s mascara clinging to her eyes, her coat pulled on as an afterthought over the top of the first articles of clothing she found that morning. He didn’t acknowledge her usually past an undetermined nod, but the normalcy of the exchange threw her for a loop. The way the world kept turning, how people could turn within her circle utterly unaware of the way her own was wobbling precariously and on the brink of collapse. It made her feel antsy and restless, irrational like the attention deprived child she never allowed herself to be and in the heat of the building she stripped off her coat and dug around for her elevator key card. She tapped it loudly against the panel in a bid to evoke some kind of reaction, but her pettiness gained her a stagnant silence that took root inside her and a _‘click-clack’_ of sharp heels that didn’t belong in her lobby.

“Lexa, dear,” the owner’s voice came, smooth like silk and something distasteful, “I’m so glad I caught you.”

Lexa breathed hard enough to feel it in her chest and turned on her heel, stowing her key card and watching the elevator doors slide to a close out of the corner of her eye.

“Nia,” she greeted the woman who had the uncomfortable knack for appear only when she sensed chinks in Lexa’s armour, in pressed Armani slacks and a designer coat that reeked of overpriced perfume – enough of an odour to send people to their deaths, Lexa thought darkly.

Nia advanced on her in a clear move of power and Lexa canted her chin, waiting for her to state the terms of her business and the brunette felt herself wavering, trapping her bottom lip between her teeth, mouth in a thin, unamused line.

“Listen, I just wanted to say that I’m so very sorry about Costia, she was a dear girl –”

Lexa’s heart ricocheted against her ribcage – back and forth, back and forth – and endless ache that she swallowed down from the apex of her throat. She spat words like bullets, a low, threatening hiss, “how do you know about Costia?”

The woman _‘tsked’_. “Friends in high up places, Lexa. A colleague of mine is on the board of NYA, and speaking of, truth be told I’m not purely here on a social call.”

“Oh?”

“The same colleague told me a _‘C Griffin’_ was on the waiting list for a summer internship,” the quiet clip on heels on polished tiles was a death march. Out of the corner of her eye, Lexa could see the doorman watching the exchange with quiet interest. “Competitive position that – it could fast track her to a prosperous career. There’s a _‘Clarke Griffin’_ on your lab team isn’t there?”

Lexa rolled her eyes. “What do you _want_ , Nia?”

“Your word,” the woman challenged. “Stand down.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing left for you here. You’ve played the young entrepreneur, the big bad CEO and it’s backfired on you. I honestly wasn’t counting on your fiancée to depart so soon but it adds incentive I guess; we wouldn’t want dear Clarke finding out her career was down the drain because of you.”

Lexa worked her jaw, muscles ticking. She could feel the tension in the cords of her neck and the set of her shoulders, wanting to snap and spill and tear all of the ugliness of her day onto the polished tiles and shining tips of Nia’s designer shoes. Today was not the day to mess with her. She advanced minutely, “are you threatening me?”

“All I ask for, is a clean merger.”

“This isn’t a merger, this is an acquisition.”

“This,” Nia stepped into her space and the suffocating claustrophobia of the action nearly had Lexa lashing out, “is business, Lexa. We do what we must to survive,” she patted her shoulder, “think on it,” and slipped out into the dusk.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's internship comes to an abrupt end as Lexa deals with the fall out of Costia's death. They both let themselves get caught up in coping mechanisms that are less than heathy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, yes, I'm still alive. I disappeared there for a moment because I was having trouble finishing this chapter but we're over the worst of it - hopefully. Only two chapters left after this! Also in the meantime this has reached over 10,000 hits and almost 400 kudos which has officially made my year! Thank you all for your constant comments I love reading what you think of it!

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_ PRESENT _

Clarke found out about the death of Costia St. Clair the same way everyone in New York did; via the front page of the entertainment section of the New York Post she passed on the short walk from her apartment to the coffee shop in the morning.

The article was tacky; a stock photo and a grainy image of Lexa with a red head on her arm with loud font as a header stating the news like some sort of salacious gossip with a follow up on page six. But the blonde had shoved a couple of flat bills at the person manning the stand and shoved the wad of paper under her arm on her way with an uncomfortable tightness in her throat if only to get a copy off the shelves. She told herself she hated her.

Two weeks later, Clarke swilled the nasty coffee from the hole-in-the-wall shop down in the subway around in the cup as she crossed into the lobby of The Woods Corporation. It was watery and tasted like styrofoam, but Grounders was one place she had been studiously avoiding for the better half of two weeks – whether it was out of self-inflicted punishment or self-preservation, she didn’t know. She did know, however, that there was something heavy in her chest whenever she thought about the possibility of running into her, hot and stinging some days, aching and dragging the others. It had been thirteen days and Raven had brought coffee into her room every single morning of them, Octavia ready with buttered toast for her in the kitchen, her jacket at the door. They each offered to pick up dinner in the place of when it was her turn, and claimed movie nights over parties – even dates with Lincoln and whatever with Anya. Clarke didn’t like to ask but that subject was too close to the acid wash of emotions beneath her veneer of control.

Her internship had been terminated with an impersonal email signed with the Woods Corporation logo and a scanned signature from Becca. The project was over now, the blonde guessed, there wasn’t any use in continuing to develop a technology for the one person it couldn’t save – not where Lexa was concerned. But the clinical cutting of ties hit her like something heavy and deep in the chest and she spent the day hate-scrubbing the kitchen with disinfectant and a brillo pad because, Octavia watching the scene with unmasked concern in her eyes.

When they theorized about heartbreak back in the fourth grade with messy hair under patterned sheets, Clarke didn’t think it would hurt this much.

Sighing, she binned her coffee on the way to the elevator bay with her lips turned up and a sour mood settling into her like a stormclad – heavy and full, a tension waiting to break. Hoping against hope that she both would and wouldn’t see Lexa like that first time. But when the doors opened the space was achingly empty and Clarke stepped into the lingering smell of copy paper and executive's cologne with the smallest modicum of hope falling from her chest.

She didn’t have much to collect from the lab. Becca gave her a hug as she left and a whispered ‘don’t blame yourself’ and Clarke wondered if she was really that transparent as she was sent upstairs to chase down Harper for the reference she had been promised via the email. The thought everyone in this building knew what she thought had been something sacred and special threw her off balance.

“Harper?”

The assistant – pen between her teeth looking so harassed today Clarke felt bad for approaching her – looked up. “Clarke, hi. What can I do for you?” she cast a doubtful glance to the door of the CEO’s office, “Lexa isn’t here.”

There was something in that; a tense shuffle of the assistant’s shoulders. But Clarke wasn’t here to wade through company politics, nor feelings that were undoubtedly connected to the newspaper cover and the quiet quiver in Lexa’s voice when she pushed the blonde’s dress into her arms that morning. She couldn’t, or so she told herself.

“I’m actually here for a reference.”  

“Right,” Harper nodded, searching her desk. The phone rang, she pressed a button, took it off the hook and watched the call go through. “The reference. I can go to HR to chase that up for you if you want to take a seat?”

Clarke sat, stilting and awkward and watching the assistant hurry towards the elevator bay, turning her phone in her hands. The low thrum of the office felt strange and disconnect today.

_ “I will not continue making excuses for her, Anya! She is the face of this company, without her, I cannot guarantee we don’t fall into Nia’s hands.” _

The voice, low and rough, came from behind the frosted glass of one of the offices, and Clarke snapped her head up, chest tightening. She hadn’t seen Anya since Octavia’s birthday.

_ “Without her,”  _ Anya retorted,  _ “you’ll have to manage. Her fiancée is dead, she deserves time to grieve.” _

_ “It’s been two weeks! This isn’t grieving, this is being reckless with what she has now.” _

_ “She needs time, Titus, I won’t let you bully her.” _

The glass screeched and Anya brushed out, tense ill-mannered. Clarke snapped up from her seat.

“Anya.”

The woman didn’t stop, and Clarke jogged to keep up despite the tug in her chest that warned her against doing anything of the thought. Lexa was like an addiction – a beautiful, terrible addiction and she could feel herself shaking from the withdrawals and acknowledging the toxins. They weren’t good for each other. But some days, empowered days, Clarke thought she was the only person who could smooth the abrasions on Lexa’s heart, and vice versa on hers.

“Anya!” The cool fabric of the women's coat crumpled under her fingers as she reached out and the blonde turned, all high cheek bones and cutting gaze. Clarke rallied herself. “Lexa,” she swallowed and hated herself, “how is she? I…” She hadn’t called her, hadn’t texted her since that morning. And it was out of the same pettiness that kept her from contacting her mother after a fight or calling Kane  _ ‘Marcus’  _ and she wished it wasn’t her immediately fall-back, but no one said coping mechanisms were ever healthy.

Anya stilled under Clarke’s hand, considering her for a moment before freeing her sleeve and handing over the folded newspaper that had been tucked under her elbow. Clarke’s finger slid along the page, flattening it out into her palm to see an overexposed picture of Lexa exiting a downtown bar, hand over her face, a sleazy headline in block print. It was awful, tabloid trash and it made Clarke’s heart contort.

Anya eyed her passively, “watch yourself, pretty girl.”

* * *

 

For the next month, the front page of the entertainment section became something Clarke waited for like the casualty list of an ongoing disaster – finding grainy pictures of someone who could barely be Lexa hailing cabs outside of bars in the early hours of weekday mornings and siliceous headlines of her ongoing downward spiral every day.

She tried texting Lexa once; a simple  _ ‘are you okay’  _ that seemed so meaningless the moment she sent it she wasn’t surprised she didn’t get a reply. The whole thing was a media storm that made Clarke think their illicit night had simply been the eye of it and not the light at the end of the tunnel. Because now the tunnel was gone and there was nothing left to work towards and her mother was riding her about the position at the hospital like she was completely oblivious to the five different kinds of confusion warring in her daughter’s head.

“Clarke,” she sighed over sudsy water and crockery half-scrubbed clean, “all I’m saying is that it would be foolish to give up this chance. It could kickstart your career.”

“What career, Mom?”

Abby levelled her with an impassive look, birth mouthed, and Clarke felt the deja vu so intensely, it sat on her chest and choked her. Everything was the same here, nothing ever changed in this house. “We’ve been through this, I don’t know how many times.”

“I know and you never listen! So, I ask again, Mom, What career?” The words came clipped and abrasive from her lips. She lowered her voice when Cal looked over again. “I don’t even know what I want anymore, how can you know?”

From where she stood at the sink, Abby set the cutlery in her hands down, soapy water sliding down her wrists. “I’m your mother, Clarke,” she reminded the blonde coolly, “I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”

“No, you’re not, Mom. You’re ignoring, and you’re dictating, and you’re avoiding. But I’m not seventeen anymore. I’m an adult, I can decide what’s best for  _ myself _ .”

At that moment, her phone buzzed with a text on the kitchen island and Clarke didn’t know whether to be grateful for the ability to inconspicuously retreat, or annoyed that it had stopped her gaining momentum. Eyes coolly lingering on the form of her mother at the sink, she went to check the notification, biting back a gasp when she saw  _ ‘Lexa’, _ a neat set of letters on her lock screen.

_ [Text from:  _ **_Lexa_ ** _ 28/06 9:47PM]  _ W 16th St, Chelsea

It was little more than the text she had sent to Lexa herself, but it tugged on the anger built up in her chest. What did Lexa expect her to do with this? The assumption she would drop whatever she was doing to drive half a city to find her was infuriating but when Abby asked, “who’s that?” she snapped to attention and shoved her phone in her pocket.

“Lexa,” she answered, “I have to go.” Abby hummed in evident disapproval continuing with what she was doing even as Clarke could see the tension in the cords of her neck and the tight set of her shoulders. “I meant what I said, Mom,” she stated as she walked out, “I’m old enough make my own decisions. Call me when you can understand that.”

Her hands shook as she closed the door; something like a weight off her chest that had been there so long she felt unsteady and unbalanced without it. That was the most definitive thing she thought she had said to her mother in years, an ultimatum set in concrete but the thrill of being on top of something finally was dampened with the queasy knowledge she was about to do something she regretted.  

She flashed her ID outside the club and strode up to the bar, parting half-drunk party goers to find Lexa nursing a tumbler of what looked like water with a straw. She didn’t seem to notice Clarke approach but when the blonde leant against the dark wood of the bar, she gestured in the general direction of the opened collared bartender with a tie done loose under the second button. “Clarke, Elijah. Elijah, Clarke,” when she lifted her head Clarke could see the sweeping darkness under her eyes, “can I have my drink now?”

So that's why Lexa texted her; barely ten and she had been cut off. The brunette refused to look at Clarke directly but even though she seemed lucid there was something aching and sad about her that made the blonde hurt. She wouldn’t have blamed anyone for thinking the brunette was six drinks in and not coping.

“Where’s Gustus?” she directed the question at Lexa who shrugged and squinted.

“It’s his night off.”

“Are you the girlfriend?” Elijah apparently, asked.

Clarke considered Lexa carefully, the way the straw danced between her fingers as she turned the half-fill glass on the bar top. She thought of the crack in Lexa’s voice and the pressure in her chest and the redhead girl on the magazine covers called Costia. “No,” she shook her head, eyes lingering on the brunette, “I’m not anything.”

* * *

Clarke hated herself for being drawn into the cycle. The stupid, immature cycle of club names and street addresses and  _ ‘on my ways’ _ . Lexa in miniskirts and sweat at her hairline from the heat of bodies and the early July nights.

They never spoke on the way back to the apartment. The blonde would thank the bartenders and slide Lexa’s credit card across the bar, but her mouth would be set into a line of straight silence through the lobby of the brunette’s building, hand looped around her waist, even though Lexa didn’t stumble. She would pin Clarke with unperceivable looks some nights as she perched on the edge of the sofa, hair down, head cradled in her hand as Clarke filled a glass of water from the fridge and handed her two aspirin. One night, Clarke found a baggie of white powder in the pocket of her coat and promptly scattered it into the toilet bowl while Lexa tried to pry her heels off in the living room. She stifled the urge to vomit. Another, the brunette asked if Clarke had taken the internship at the hospital, and when she wordlessly shook her head, Lexa cringed into the plush cushions at her back.

She refused to meet her eyes for the next three times and Clarke didn’t push any further. Lexa was stoic and mule-like in her stubbornness. She rejected any kind of help that was given to her – Clarke had seen the remnants of expensive scotch in the sink one night, along with the bottles in the recycling and a note in what appeared to be Anya’s heavy scrawl to buy something other than alcohol the next time she went to the shop. But Clarke – as much as she despised herself – would always take her home, and clean her up, and loop her hair into a braid while she was throwing up vodka into the toilet. All of which she did filled with a heavy numbness, like the full emotional understanding of what she was doing was sure to ruin her. Because she knew, unequivocally that it would. She could see in it Lexa’s eyes too, as glassy and glazed with alcohol and who knows what else as they were some nights, that this was scraping them both red and raw.

When she was younger, Abby would tell her not to get involved with things that weren’t good for her. She probably meant cigarettes and boys at the time, or the way Octavia would sneak down the rusting ladder of the fire escape to go to parties in the Bronx. But right now, Clarke never wished she had listened to her mother more.

 

**_LEXA’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_ PRESENT _

Somehow three weeks was a short enough length of time for the numbness to burn away. It shrivelled and bubbled like scorched plastic, and left a stench just as acrid as Clarke strode through the clean lines of the building’s lobby with the bulk of this morning's tabloids pressed under her arm. Its pages held more of the same that they had been littered with for the past month and a half. Pages filled with grainy images of the disgraced Lexa Woods; whiz kid entrepreneur turned New York party-girl with her hair down in skimpy clothes. There were two across-the-street shots of Clarke steadying Lexa outside the curb of a downtown club, another of Lexa in one of her worst moments, retching up whiskey with her head in the gutter, but they weren’t even the tip of the iceberg Clarke had come to learn intimately over the past weeks. What she was angry about now was worse.

It was strange seeing Lexa’s apartment in the light. The mornings after were a warzone and after their first, Clarke had studiously avoided them with the knowledge that Anya, hard faced and prescribing tough love, would be around to clean up the debris.

This hardly counted as light though, Clarke admitted as she stepped off the elevator to the pulled drapes of the living area where pathetic rays of sun tried to breach the curtains of thick material, leaving everything bathed in the odd dove grey light. There were shoes on the hardwood – heels with the toes scuffed and the patent leather wet with what smelt like cheap liquor – and a dress hanging over one side of the sofa. An empty glass lay on its side by the sink, the air stunk of liquor store whiskey and stale vomit. Clarke rolled her eyes.

Striding around the occupied sofa, she ripped the curtains open and blinked at the shock of it. The body passed out in the cushions writhed and flung an arm over her eyes, “I told you to leave, Anya.”

“Lucky for you,” Clarke retorted, “I’m not Anya.” She went to the kitchen again, righting the empty glass and filling another from the fridge.

“Clarke?” When Lexa sat up it was with her tee hiked halfway up the taut skin of her stomach and wearing panties but nothing else. Clarke averted her eyes and the brunette squinted through the light to affirm her suspicions. “There’s aspirin in the bedside drawer,” she groaned, sitting to rake a hand through her hair. Clarke noticed the way the grey under her eyes had darkened before she watched the brunette lean forwards to cradle her head in her palm. Abandoning her search for painkillers in what she had come to know as the medicine cabinet, Clarke stalked down the hall to the bedroom, ignoring the seething mess and rifling through the drawer in the bedside table until her fingers found the half-opened foil tab. She pulled them out and watched piece of folded paper flutter to the ground. Leaving the aspirin on the bed she bent down to unfold it, familiar ballpoint lines emerging to her, stroke by stroke, until she could trace the proud of Lexa’s jaw, the gentle slope of her nose into her forehead, the hair falling around her eyes. She remembered the lilt in the brunette’s voice when she saw it for the first time tucked in Clarke’s lap as the blonde traced it out from the real thing, the first night the she saw Lexa for what she was and the moment grasped at her chest and squeezed it so tight she struggled to breathe. When she slipped the sketch into the reports headed for Lexa’s desk in a bold move the morning after the gala, she hadn’t thought it would end up anywhere but the bottom of the wire office trash can. This – Lexa’s apartment, her bedroom – it felt oddly intimate, too much for the distance that had morphed between them.

She handled the dog-eared edges as if it was something sacrosanct and tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans, returning to the living room with aspirin in hand.

“Did I tell you to come here?” Lexa asked when Clarke popped two pills into her palm. “Because if I did, I’m sorry,” her throat bobbed as she swallowed and closed her eyes against the bitter taste, “last night was a bit much.”

Clarke wanted to scoff at the disconnect Lexa had created within herself. Last night she had sat on the cool tiles of the ensuite until two am. with the almost comatose CEO until the sun started to seep its way into the skylight. She slammed the glass down on the table with force that cause the water to slosh. “You need help.”

Lexa’s voice was distracted as she pressed her fingers against the dip in her temple, “I’m sorry?”

“I said,” Clarke slapped the newspaper down, open at the fold, “you need help.

Lexa squinted. The headline today was different to what it had been for the last however many weeks. It spoke to something more fact than claim, which was what drew Clarke to picking the copy off the stand rather than ignoring it as she had since the one with the news of Costia’s death. A full-page spread showed a clear shot of Nia in front of the Woods Corporation logo, company portfolio in hand, adorned with the words  _ ‘Woods Corporation Merger Underway After CEO Steps Down’. _

“Tell me it isn’t true.”

Lexa shook her head against the accusation and scrubbed a hand over her face, shoulders slumped as Clarke fought the aching crack in her voice.

“Tell me,” Clarke pressed, “that you didn’t give away your company to her! Tell me you didn’t just roll over and die the minute life got hard!”

The brunette’s reaction was instantaneous. She straightened against the ache in her temple and throbbing down her neck and canted her chin like Clarke had seen her do when Titus cornered her in the office, eyes shuttered, bird mouthed. Clarke could feel frustration brewing like magma in her throat and her fingers itched with a need that was raw and aggressive.

She wanted to be loud. She wanted to yell and scream and set the world on fire if only it would wrench one stupid reaction out of just a single person around her. Practically vibrating with the weight of it, Clarke watched Lexa rise from the sofa and stride to the kitchen, fingers searching and finding the switch for the espresso machine. She levelled herself at Clarke when the machine was emitting a hard-sounding buzz. “I can’t tell you that.”

“You’re a role model, Lexa!” Clarke snapped, she could feel it in her chest tearing flesh from bone. “You’re inspiring people, hell, you inspire me. But this,” she jabbed a finger at the headline with so much force it shook the table. The vase of withering flowers shuddered on the glass and she could feel herself shaking apart. “This isn’t inspirational,” she tried not to let the knowledge that the next page held a picture of Lexa draped of a lanky redhead hurt her. “This is sad.” Lexa levelled her with a stare just on this side of apathetic and Clarke seethed. “I had faith in you.”

For a moment, the only sound between them was the mundane trickle of coffee hitting ceramic and the sound of Clarke breathing as if through the wind tunnel of her emotions before Lexa wet her lips and spoke. “I know you did Clarke. But I won’t pretend to be more than I am. I tried to,” she shrugged, “I did it all; the company, the apartment. It backfired.”

“That’s no reason to stop living!”

“I’m fine, Clarke!”

Clarke watched the agitated fumble of Lexa’s fingers on her mug. “You’re not!” she insisted hotly, “you’re hurting!”

Coffee splashed over the rim and Lexa swore; a loud violent sound that etched itself into the hollows of Clarke’s ears and the corners of the apartment, and the blonde had never felt so achingly vulnerable yet so furiously cold in her life. Breathing through her nose, Lexa patted the hot liquid off her stomach. “I’m surviving,” she replied, “same as all of us.”

Clarke hated that they were back to this; cold, curated answers. She wondered where she had gone wrong because all through this she had been tearing herself apart to make it work for god knows what point because the brunette had her head so far into her compulsory self-inflicted punishment she didn't think she even noticed Clarke was the one there each night. Frustration and hurt at that welled up to something that festered in her throat. She snatched the mug from beneath the shake in Lexa’s fingertips – the one thing that had escaped the CEO’s veneer of control – and set it on the counter. “Maybe,” she hissed, “life should be about more than just surviving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr if you want ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading! Comments and kudos appreciated!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa attempt to work through their issues separately until it becomes clear that a clean break isn’t in the cards, and unresolved issues only make matters worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After 34567890 years of promising this chapter was being written, it's finally here.

**_THE WOODS CORPORATION, NYC, NY_ **

_TWO YEARS AGO_

_Lexa woke to a crick in her neck and the silent whine of an empty building that told her she had veered past late and into stupidly late. Even Lincoln, her faithful companion to all hours had left a glass of water on her desk and a note telling her he was signing off to the night guard but to call his personal phone if she needed anything. She thought he felt sorry for her – no, she knew he felt sorry for her._

_And the worst of it was, she didn’t think she could blame him for it._

_“What am I going to do with you?”_

_This late, Costia had forsaken her usual tepid knock on the outside of her door frame and entered unannounced with her coat slung over her arm and a look on her face that sent guilt crawling into the pit of Lexa’s stomach._

_She ducked her head like a scolded child, closing her laptop which had set itself to sleep mode and slipped her skewed glasses off her nose. “Forgive me?” She suggested._

_Costia raised a brow and Lexa groaned, hunching forwards to cradle her fuzzy head in her hands and press fingers into her eyes. “I know,” she moaned, “I know. I missed dinner again. Bad Lexa,” she sat up to find Costia at the edge of her desk with something akin to amusement in her eyes. There was nothing Lexa Woods liked better that piling more weight on top of that she already had set squarely on her shoulders. She was going to get a complex if she kept at it._

_“Babe, it’s quarter to eleven.”_

_“Titus walked out at three to catch a plane to Sacramento and left me with a corporate nightmare, he won’t be back until next week.”_

_“You’re going to burn yourself out,” Costia frowned, the delicate dip of her brow and slip of her lip that had been reserved for Lexa of late and the brunette hated it as much as she hated the fact that her fiancée was asleep most nights when she got home, and again when she left for the office in the morning. They were barely seeing each other some days, and, sipping filtered coffee at her desk while Titus droned at her, Lexa felt like she was splitting apart at the seams._

_But Costia was unflinching and committed in her affection; she would roll over to tangle herself in Lexa when the brunette crawled into bed at two a.m. and made an effort to be up early with a coffee and a kiss when Lexa left. It made the CEO feel ill as she accepted both kiss and coffee, because for some reason she couldn't figure out how to do the same._

_But then again, Lexa had figured long ago Costia was too good for her._

_She dropped her hands and sucked air into her lungs. “Just a few more months,” she promised, “the company will be on its feet then.”_

_Swivelling Lexa’s chair away from her desk, Costia crouched at the CEO’s feet. “Yeah,” she entwined their fingers, “but you might not be.”_

_“I’m sorry,” the brunette swallowed the heavy film on her tongue._

_Costia shook her head and Lexa watched the way auburn hair frayed from her ponytail and into her eyes. “You don’t need to be sorry. You an Advil and a good sleep. Come on,” Lexa let herself be coaxed to her feet. “I’m driving you home.”_

 

**_UPPER EAST SIDE, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Lexa had stopped counting how many it took to get her numb.

She used to do it in the beginning. She sat counting blood-alcohol levels until her mind slowed to the speed of feet wading through sludge like it was her purpose and her penance. But it had been two months since then. Fall came ragged and sharp edged, teeth bleeding the frenzied neon colour out of the summer until the line between what was penance and what was pathetic was too blurred for her to figure out, and it didn’t leave her grieving, it left her sad and torn.

Her abrasions caught on people now. She didn’t respond so people learnt not to engage, and she knew it bad was when even her phone calls from Titus – followed by clipped voice mails of thinly veiled threats and outrages about Nia’s the direction for the company – had fallen silent. She hadn’t signed the paperwork yet, it wasn’t official, but the woman knew all of her pressure points – and yes, maybe Clarke hadn’t taken the internship at the hospital and perhaps Lexa had cringed at the knowledge she had given in for a reason that was now null in void, but the woman was ruthless and surprisingly full of threats of which Lexa couldn’t tell were empty or not. At this point, she was little more than a figurehead.

All of this she told the bespectacled woman as she sat in the blue-walled office that felt much too homely for its function.

Anya had left the card of the doctor pinned to her fridge the first week of September and she had slipped it free and stared at the white rectangle until she lost all concept of what the words _‘Indra Porter PhD and PysD Clinical Psychology’_ meant. She struggled to bite back a stinging retort when the Anya brought it up over the phone on the mandatory once-a-week call she seemed to have implemented herself as a proof of life on her spiralling mentee – something about it being no wonder she was so emotionally stunted this was her closest thing to family’s semblance of caring. But she scolded herself instead and held her tongue.

Lexa was many things – read emotionally compromised, stubborn and somewhat selfish – but she wasn’t cruel.

That night she got drunk to forget the email she received from Queen Industries with further thinly veiled threats, this time targeting Anya’s place at her firm that Lexa had conveniently omitted from their phone call.

She was too far gone now. She had come this far, bending over backwards – or rather lying down flat – to accommodate Nia and her tyrannical want for power, to protect what she had left at the expense of her own soul and she wouldn’t stop now.

Granted what she had wasn’t much. In fact, she could barely consider it hers because it had been eight weeks since Clarke had stormed out of her apartment, pensive like a storm cloud but twice as deadly, but she would protect it regardless.

The next card appeared the morning after Anya found her face down on the bathroom floor, and flicked her around the ear for making her think she had drowned in her own vomit. It was lined on the other side, with a date and a time in looped hand writing and Anya at slammed in on the counter telling her in no uncertain terms that she had an appointment, but it was up to her whether she went.

It wasn’t the ultimatum she had been waiting for – Lexa didn’t know whether feel despondent or indignant. The knowledge that the only person she had left was waving her white flag set an echoing sort of resignation rattling through her bones. She wanted to be sick.

But Anya left with her coat turned up to her chin and grim silence in the thin set of her lips and instead, Lexa pressed the card into her fist and googled the address.

Indra, Lexa learnt too quickly, was far too intuitive for her liking. It was one thing to understand someone's motivations, but another entirely to crawl inside someone’s head like a pervasive weed – both of which the woman managed to do within two minutes of inviting Lexa to sit down.

“Why don’t we start with what’s brought you here today, Lexa.”

The ridiculous cliché had her grinding her teeth into her jaw. She glanced sideways at the panoramic view of the East side of the park. “Anya doesn’t agree with my coping mechanisms.”

“Which are?”

Lexa snapped her head back to the therapist, tempering the alarm stinging her chest. It was unlikely Anya had spoken to the woman about her, doctor-patient confidentiality and all that, but her hackles are raised and Lexa isn’t in the business of doling out her life story. “I’m not an alcoholic.”

“I never said you were.” The therapist scratched something down on her pad of lined refill. “Are you worried about your drinking habits?”

If there was an analogue clock in the room, Lexa was sure she would be able to count out all three-thousand of the unobstructed seconds of silence in the fifty-minute session. But all she could see was the laptop’s blinking screen saver from where it sat on the therapist’s desk as Indra tapped the butt of the pen against her pad. She eyed Lexa’s lack of response and adjusted her tactic.

“Perhaps we’re getting too far ahead of ourselves. Why don’t you tell me why _you_ are here, not why you think your friend sent you?” A good question, Lexa considered, and not one she knew the answer of. “What are these coping mechanisms in aid of?”

“My fiancée died four months ago.”

“My condolences.”

Lexa tangled her fingers primly in her lap before continuing. “She was sick, it was inevitable.”

It was the first time she had admitted it to herself and she didn’t know whether it was the truth or what she thought the therapist wanted to know. There were too many hypotheticals in her life where she refused to buckle down and find something solid, she was all too happy to let the uncertainty choke her.

“Sick in what way?” Indra pushed gently.

“We were in an accident,” Lexa wet her lips, “two years ago. It was late, she was driving and we collided head on with a drunk driver. She was in a coma at New York-Arkadia for two years. I was trying to help her with my company’s resources, but I wasn’t fast enough.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility to put on yourself.”

“It was my fault she was driving,” Lexa levelled her chin in challenge.

“And what about these two years,” Indra moved on. “That’s a long time to grieve on your own. Was there ever…” She struggled for delicate wording and Lexa clacked her teeth.

“I was in bed with another woman the night she died.”

Indra seemed immune to the shock factor Lexa was trying to play at. She nodded, “and how do you feel about that after the fact?”

Unstuck, Lexa wanted to reply. Shaky and uncertain in every area of her life except the memory of what it felt like to come apart in Clarke’s arms. She hadn’t felt truly tethered to someone since the night she tugged the blonde into her bed, but the knowledge of that was a guilty secret she could see in the therapist’s eyes that she had already let slip. She adjusted the cuffs of her coat around her wrists.

“Like I’ve betrayed the woman I was going to marry.”

She had always been told she had a healthy sense of Catholic guilt.

“Hence the drinking?”

Lexa rose her brow.

“Is it possible your subsequent behaviour is as a result of your guilt for moving on rather than your fiancée’s death specifically?”

Her jaw ticked, cords flexing in her neck as she fought the all-encompassing need to flee. She was good at it now, it was all she had been doing for three months – fleeing and drinking and drowning, so much so that it would be hard now to breathe without the water clogging up her lungs. “I’d rather not get into it.”

When she thought about Costia now – how she had felt sitting in the back of her fiancée’s funeral – it wasn’t gut-wrenching, it was an aching sense of nostalgia for the version of herself she left in California when she pressed the ticket to New York into her then girlfriend’s hands.

She missed the easiness of having someone to call her home.

“Lexa, the first step to unpacking these feelings is to understand that you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I’m not doing this,” Lexa launched herself to her feet, “I’m not here for this.”

“Well,” notepad at her side, Indra stood to meet her, “that’s your choice, but –”  

“My _choice?”_

Time snapped and so did Lexa, anger blooming fiercely on her tongue. “When has this any of this ever been my choice? The foster homes! The scholarships! Costia! Nia! Clarke!” She breathed through the ache in her throat that threatened to send her voice cracking, fists straining at her sides. “I didn’t ask for any of it, but it happened, and it’s up to me to carry it!”

“You don’t have to carry it alone, Lexa,” fired back, firmly. The woman was no-nonsense in her approach and her patient, in turn, felt like she was being handled like a child. Lexa strained against the sting the words caused, air thinning in her lungs until she was struggling to breathe.

Weakness was an unattractive trait – it wheedled her way into her and forced her cracks up to the surface until her opponents knew exactly where to push to send her crumbling, and the fact that she had no control over it was unprecedented and entirely too frustrating. The only thing Lexa had left was control over herself, and barely even that.

Swallowing the bitterness on her tongue, she lifted her chin towards the roof to staunch the tears blurry the join of the ceiling into a wobbly scribble, and tucked her nails into her palms.

“I’m not doing this,” she spoke quietly when she had collected herself, gathering her bag from beside her chair and sliding it onto her shoulder. “Thank you for your time.”

She had been aware of herself before. It was all in a sense of punishment and penance – the drinking, the self-inflicted isolation. Clarke too though she preferred not to think about it because every time she did there was a white-hot feeling in her chest, like it was burning her from inside to out. Clarke was her own person, she was warm flesh and blood, perfectly fierce – almost too much for Lexa to accommodate in the deepest depth of her spiral. But every time she appeared out of a cab when Lexa texted on a whim it made something inside of her bloom again.

Costia was never like that. She _–_ in spite of her spirit, her penchant for skipping class and her incessant difficulty _–_ was warm and pliant, a lingering memory that was soft around the edges, reminding her with gentle touches and little words that life wasn’t about hurting.

But today, Lexa didn’t care about either. New age self-realisation be damned, she wanted her mind numb and her mouth heavy – to be so far removed from herself she that she didn’t recognise herself in the mirror.

She didn’t make a follow-up appointment on the way out.

 

**_CLARKE’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

“Have you thought about Johns Hopkins?” Octavia asked, lounging against the sofa cushions with her fuzzy bed socked feet in Clarke’s lap, toes digging into her thighs.

Summer had stretched like taffy, overstaying its welcome to put Clarke through an arduous month of awkward self-exploration and screening her calls in case Lexa rang.

She hadn’t.

Then, two weeks ago, the temperature had taken on a downward spiral that had Octavia growling at Clarke and Raven to put the heater on when they got home.

Clarke shook her head, tugging at a loose thread on the cuff of the brunette’s sock until Octavia nudged her and she tucked her fingers back into the folds of her sweater. “No,” she followed up, “my Mom studied there. We’re trying to decide what _I_ want to do.”

Raven snorted, “and how is Mommy dearest?”

“Radio silence since June.”

“Yeesh.”

“I saw Cal yesterday,” Clarke offered instead, “she’s trying to convince Mom to let her to Aspen this Winter. She asked me if I could talk her into it.”

“But you’re not going to,” Octavia answered immediately.

Clarke pulled at the runaway thread again. “I haven’t decided.”

Abby didn’t do well with ultimatums, but Clarke didn’t have it in her to fight anymore, especially when it was the same regurgitated words and the same slamming doors. If she was being honest, the sheer exhaustion it had caused over the past couple of years might have been what kept her in a monotonous loop of pre-med in the first place. Her internship – Lexa – had invigorated her, but it had also left her smarting with the loss and with more questions than answers.

She knew she didn’t want to be her mother. Medicine drained Abby as much as it gave her a purpose and after the last couple of months, Clarke was determined to find a coping mechanism that resembled something healthy. Maybe she would take up yoga, or throw caution to the wind and hike the pacific coast trial to find herself like that one Reese Witherspoon film.

Raven’s phone rung from where it lay charging on the kitchen island and Clarke tumbled out of her reverie – summer camp had shown her hiking wasn’t as idyllic as it seemed, Octavia would laugh at her anyway. “It’s quarter to twelve,” she complained as Raven practically vaulted the sofa, pulling the cable from her phone to answer it with a huff in her cheeks.

“If it’s Anya,” Octavia hollered with the maturity of a second grader, “tell her that her and her sex noises can go elsewhere.”

“Fuck off, O,” Raven fired back, but looking over, Clarke swore she could see the heat in Raven’s cheeks under the thin veneer of nonchalance. Clarke had effectively avoided Anya since their encounter at the office after Costia’s death – the run-in had left her off kilter, with the woman’s words echoing in her head like an omen she had allowed to play out and of which she was the ill-fated recipient. It was awkward. But Raven simpered in Anya’s presence, she preened when she thought Clarke wasn’t looking and the blonde kept her secret.

“Pot, kettle,” Clarke retorted pointedly, yanking Octavia’s ankle, “better her sex noises than Lincoln's boxers on the bathroom floor.”  

Octavia pressed her brows in mock complaint and snatches her leg back, “I don’t like you when you’re not getting laid,” she told Clarke matter of fact, “you’re prickly.”

“You’re horny.”

“Both of you,” Raven hissed, “shut up.” She stuck a finger into her ear and craned to hear the caller. “Jasper – I – no, I can’t hear you, go outside or something.”

 _‘Who is it?’_ Octavia mouthed, annoyed. _‘Jasper,’_ Raven replied, she tapped the screen, “Jas, I’m putting you on speaker,” and held the phone towards Clarke and Octavia, shrugging at the garbled half-conversation on the other end of the line. It was jumbled white-noise and the heavy thump of a bass beat but then his voice was discernible again. “That girl’s here,” he yelled, “from Octavia’s birthday. Clarke’s friend, brunette with the short dress.”

Clarke choked on the air that leapt to the apex of her throat, hot suddenly beneath the restriction of her clothes as panic seized up the column of her spine. Wide eyed, Raven fumbled with the phone and pulled it back to her ear but Clarke was already extracting herself from the tangle of Octavia’s limbs. “We cut her off but she won’t leave,” Jasper’s tinny voice recounted in Raven’s ear, “says she has no one to call.”

The truth of the situation, whether hollow or heavy, might as well have slapped Clarke upside the head. She had left. Lexa had treated her like shit – that wasn’t in question, Clarke had spent all summer trying to put right what had been rubbed raw after a month of seeing the girl the first girl she loved ruin herself with calculated certainly night after night – but ultimately, Clarke had left. The reality of becoming another in the long list of people who had walked out of Lexa’s life for her to become the way she was, was too much for Clarke to bare.

Humans were truly idiotic creatures – doing the same thing over and expecting different results.

“Tell him I’m on my way,” she informed Raven shortly.

Hanging up, Raven wrenched Clarke by the arm back to her side, “you’re not doing this,” she decided, but Clarke was done being scolded like a teenager. The air whispered against her teeth as she breathed in. “Let go of me.”

“Raven’s right, Clarke,” Octavia shook her head, “you can’t go back to driving around the city at the ass crack of dawn to hold back Lexa’s hair while she pukes. It’s not healthy, I’m not letting my best friend go back to ruining herself for someone who can’t see her properly.”

Clarke snatched her forearm back, rubbing at the white marks left by a rueful looking Raven. “With all due respect, O, this is when I start making decisions for myself.”

She took her keys into her palm and let the metal dig into her skin until it stung. She shook her head minutely at the way her friends stood poised to stop her. “You don’t have to wait up for me,” she assured them.  

The Ark – like on the night of Octavia's birthday – had a line out the door and a heavy-set security guard at the entrance Clarke feared wouldn't let her in. But he did, with a private rove of eyes over her body and she brushed him off with a shudder in the set of her shoulders.

Walking in was like wading through sludge. The atmosphere was thick, speakers drilling the bass beat into her skull and the air hot with sweat and spilt alcohol. She supposed she was drunk enough last time for it to be pleasurable, but now the whole thing felt sticky beneath the collar of her tee and Clarke wanted out.

Shaking off the visceral memory of cold fingers under the straps of her dress and hot breath against her neck, she found Lexa quickly – an angry, belligerent shadow of Lexa who brandished an empty shot glass like a weapon and quivering lips like a countdown to her eventual and fated implosion. The blonde ached at the sight of it.

“Clarke!” Jasper hollered from behind the bar. Irritable, she shouldered her way through a throng of drunken guys to speak to him.

“How long has she been here?” She listened to the way the brunette’s voice pitched, words stilted as she ranted to the bartender withholding her next drink.

Jasper shrugged, “My shift started an hour ago, she was already like this then.”

She spotted Lexa’s purse on the barstool nearby, it’s owner a few feet away, and went through the wallet until she found a credit card, slipping it across the bar for Jasper to charge, “here.” She interrupted Lexa as the brunette was taking a winding breath, “we’re leaving.”

Lexa froze. Unlike any version of the brunette she had ever seen, Clarke could clock each micro-expression that played out on the canvas of her face – the shock, terror and guilt traversing the vast dips and slopes of her cheekbones and jaw. Then, she crumbled apart under Clarke’s fingers like fragile porcelain. “Clarke,” the syllable fell short and clipped from her chattering teeth.

Clarke wet her lips. “Hey.”

Lexa stumbled and Clarke steadied her by a hand on her waist and Lexa wrenched herself back so hard that it jarred them both. “Why are you here?”

“Jasper called me.”

Lexa scoffed, disgusted. “I’m not a child, Clarke. You made it clear we were over, you have no reason to be here.” She grabbed her purse from the stool and went to leave but Clarke snatched her arm, baring her teeth.

“Why are you so _fucking_ stubborn?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve treated me like crap ever since Costia died and I get it, Lexa I do, but that’s not my fault! It wasn’t my fault when we slept together and it’s not my fault now!” The breath Clarke took dragged against her teeth and burnt in her lungs. “And you’re right,” she agreed sourly, “I don’t have any reason for being here, except the fact that whatever we had before all this shit happened, it didn’t go away overnight.”

Lexa struggled in Clarke’s hands, wrist flexing, the muscles in her jaw ticking until she was wound up as tight as a spring-toy and Clarke was waiting for her to break.

“I know it takes time to grieve,” she hissed, “It’s been four years and my mom still can’t face the fact that my dad is gone, but that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. All I did then was antagonise her but I’m not going to let you keep doing this to yourself now if there’s something I can do to stop it.”Jasper slipped the card back over the bar and Clarke took it, turning to leave with her fingers still splayed against Lexa’s wrist but the brunette resisted. “I’m taking you home,” Clarke hissed.

Lexa snatched her wrist free, “she _was_ my home.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Lexa, homes change!” She watched the brunette tremble. “We move house! Put down new roots! Let new people in! It’s how we grow and you think you’d know that because you’ve been doing it your whole life, but instead you seem so intent on pushing people away!”

Everything about Lexa lost its fight. She sagged like a cut puppet, all skin and loose bones in her glamorous dress, and Clarke’s heart fluttered in fright. “Not everyone,” she breathed in a little breath, so shallow that something within Clarke was sacred it would be her last. She shook her head. “Not you.”

Lexa was so close – uncomfortably close – that Clarke could see the little pigments of colour in the irises of her eyes. And she had been wrong, she thought, when she had first met the brunette; her eyes were so green. As green as they were on the magazine covers in all of their photoshopped glory. And as of right now it might have been the reflection in the neon club lights, but there was something so otherworldly about Lexa that Clarke thought it was no wonder the girl was so perpetually lost, never anchored to anything, except maybe Clarke, except maybe to the feeling of how right it had felt to be in her arms.

She was so beautiful in the face of the immense pain in her glassy eyes. Innately pure, and soft around the edges, and in that moment Clarke decided she was going to single handedly hunt down whoever thought it was within their power to put this wondrous girl through what she had been through.

Then there were lips on hers, and they were kissing. Soft and sweet, with little touches that were so unlike the first time they had kissed.

It had been hungry, then. A heady, dangerous mix of drunken fumbling’s and pent up passion, but this felt different, and when Clarke swallowed the little noises Lexa was making, it felt like she was breathing for the first time since the world had come unstuck around her.

She was underdressed, her hair unattended to, wearing yesterday’s jeans – the one with the stain on the thigh – and probably Octavia’s top, and in contrast to Lexa’s brand of tragic beauty – her skirt too short, hair cascading free, lipstick smudged and wobbling on her heels – Clarke felt clunky and unworthy.

To Lexa though, she was sacrosanct. Holding Clarke’s cheeks reverently between twin, shaking palms, slick with alcohol and sweat, the brunette was so gentle –  desperately, needily gentle – but there was vodka on her tongue and something salty staining her lips and _god_ , she was crying and drunk and this was wrong.

Hands slipped into her hair, tangling in the baby-fine locks at the nape of her neck, and Clarke hummed against Lexa’s lips. It was supposed to be a protest but Clarke wasn’t even convinced she wanted this to stop herself and it was with reluctance in every movement that she pried the brunette’s hands off of her. “We can’t,” she breathed. Lexa whined, barely there. “You’re drunk, Lexa,” Clarke shook her head.

Hiccupping, the brunette drew her hands to her side like she had been scalded, bringing her wrist to her dripping nose. “I’m sorry.”

* * *

 There was a yellow sticky-note in Raven’s handwriting on the fridge at one a.m. that came unstuck in her fingers when Clarke pulled it off. _‘We’re sorry’_ it stated in filled in block letters. Clarke left it on the bench as she moved past it to offer a sobering Lexa a glass of water and an aspirin.

It felt strange to have the brunette – wet cheeked and arms folded – standing in her kitchen. Like she had kidnapped a fairy-tale character and conjured her here. Lexa certainly looked out of place enough for it.

But she took the foil tab of pills and set the glass on the bench, slipping two out and swallowing them back and chasing them with water.

Clarke floundered when she levelled her gaze. “Do you want to shower?”

“I,” Lexa swallowed “yes,” she acquiesced. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Clarke assured her. She motioned for Lexa to follow her fetching a towel from the cupboard and opening the door to the bathroom, silently cursing Octavia’s messiness at the sight of the shampoo bottle graveyard that had accumulated in the basin of the shower. “There’s soap in there,” she flushed as she apologised, “you have to jiggle the handle while the water heats up.”

It all felt so dinky compared to the nights she spent returning Lexa home to her own sprawling Bryant Park apartment with its sleek lines and fixtures, like a child's playhouse but Clarke shouldered the knowledge and Lexa nodded as she pulled the door to, “thank you,” she murmured.

Clarke retreated and listened for the shower to come on, fingers toying with the edges of Raven’s sticky-note in the half-light above the kitchen island until the corners curled and Lexa emerged, towel-clad, in a cloud of vanilla-coconut scented steam. Lips parted, the blonde started at the edge of the towel tucked around her chest, her hair running rivulets of lukewarm water down her collar bones until she spoke. “Do you have – uh – I don’t have clothes.”

“Of course,” Clarke started, “I’m sorry.” She mentally filed the apology away, adding a strike to the tally she kept of how many times those words had been uttered between them, and how meaningless they had become. Formality never sat as well with Clarke as she supposed it did for Lexa. “Hang on,” she excused herself to find underwear and a spare t-shirt from her room, turning her back while Lexa changed. In the silence, the slow shuffle of fabric against skin might as well have been a war cry. “You can have my bed.”

“Thank you, Clarke,” Lexa shook her head, “but no.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” Clarke corrected, brow raised. “You’ll feel like shit in the morning if you don’t sleep. Just do it.”

“I’m not the only stubborn one here, it seems.”

Clarke scoffed, stripping her jeans down her legs and turning to unhook her bra and pull a sleep shirt over her head, smoothing her hands over her bare arms, jaw setting against what to do next. Lexa sat gingerly beneath the comforter on her bed like it would be ripped away and replaced with a bed of thorns and nails in an instant, strained and tense. But things were to ripped open and raw between them for Clarke to consider doing the same.

“Clarke?” Lexa called as she turned to leave.

“Yeah?”

“You were right.”  

“About what?”

A pause.

“All of it.”

Whatever _‘it’_ was, it arranged itself in a loop in Clarke’s head as she slipped next door to Octavia’s room, navigating the half-filled washing basket and toed-off sneakers littering the floor to slide in next to her like she was in the third grade again. “It’s me,” she assured her friend as she stirred, slinging an arm over her eyes. “Lexa’s in my bed.”

“I’m mad at you,” Octavia murmured sourly. “I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself.”

Clarke arranged herself on her back, arms folded on her stomach over the comforter while Octavia did the same and the juxtaposition between them now, and them at ten years old was too much and too little. She hooked her hand into Octavia’s.

“Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to anyone who is still invested in this fourteen chapter long angst fest, I honestly wasn't expecting such a good response for my first fic. There's only one chapter left after this, and then maybe an epilogue but that won't be posted until Christmas. Come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thank you so much for reading!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after round two goes a little better than the first time, Abby calls and Lexa takes a baby step, then a bigger one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this was a little quicker than last time? Either way, thank you for stucking around. Over 600 kudos is more than I ever could have hoped to get on my first fic. Enjoy!

**_CLARKE’S APARTMENT, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

Clarke didn’t want to get up.

The morning hadn’t even afforded her a second of ignorant bliss before the events of last night were arranging themselves into a loop in her head and she squeezed her eyes shut like she could trick her body back to sleep.

The resignation in which Lexa had stood there and taken her words still smarted like an open wound, and as much gusto as she had managed to summon the night before, it was all gone now. All that was left with a pain above her heart and a lump in her throat like when she would sit in school after her dad died and try not to cry.

She sat up gingerly to press her forehead into her palms, her head felt like that too. Like the force of keeping her tears securely in her head build up a tension that demanded to be let out. She slid it into the steeple of her fingers, soothing the ache that brewed there.

She needed coffee.

Cutlery clattered in the kitchen and Clarke scrubbed both hands over her face before swinging her legs out of bed. Her roommates had never been the most considerate, but now she was forced to consider what she would find outside of the sanctuary she had made for herself out of the four walls of Octavia’s bedroom.

Either Lexa was there, wearing the clothes Clarke had given her last night, still in Clarke’s bed. Or, she wasn’t. Having fled after waking up with a fuzzy head and the taste of last night’s bad decisions on her tongue.

Clarke couldn’t decide which would be better.

With the curtains still drawn, she fumbled through the mess, half-blind, until there was a sweater under her finger tips and which she pulled on. Being Octavia’s, it fitted tight and awkward around the arms but Clarke tugged on the cuffs anyway and willed the strength of steel into the second layer of protection.

The few feet from the doorway to the kitchen felt like the last push of a marathon. Raven and Octavia looked up in unison when they notice her, heads swivelling like meerkats from where they are sat side by side at the breakfast bar.

Lexa stood on the other side of the kitchen island from them, fixated on the steaming cup of coffee in what Clarke understood as a desperate bid to avoid uncomfortable eye contact with her friends over the breakfast paraphernalia on the counter.

The only other time Clarke had seen her this early in the morning, she had been teeming with chaotic energy the blonde was afraid of. This Lexa was wearing her t-shirt and the sweater she remembered leaving hung over the side of her laundry basket, had bleary eyes and stood in her kitchen with her hair in a wilting topknot as the image of the least threatening thing Clarke had ever seen.

She dragged a hand through her hand. “Morning.”

Her friends rose from their seats like a switch was flipped.

“I have a date,” Octavia shovelled the last spoonful of cereal into her mouth and stacked her bowl in the sink.

“I have work,” Raven excused herself in a similar fashion.

They were both gone within minutes, leaving Clarke and Lexa with a silence neither of them knew how to break.

Selfishly, Clarke wanted Lexa to speak first. She wanted an apology laid out and black and white, remorse for how the whole situation had played out. But Lexa, Clarke had discovered over the course of the past year or so, was anything other than black and white. And neither was she.

She supposed everyone all lived in different shades of the moral grey area which they expected others to navigate unaided.  People were so stupid and reluctant when it came to feelings.

“I’m sorry about what I said last night.”

Clarke tucked a mug under the spout of the still-humming coffee machine and Lexa moved out of the way when she approached to get milk out of the fridge. “It wasn’t fair.”

Lexa shook her head. “No,” she said softly, her voice was husky and Clarke had to will herself not to melt at the way it grated against her throat. “I deserved it. And don’t say I didn’t, because I did,” she insisted when Clarke opened her mouth to agree out of obligation.

The blonde nodded mutely.

The coffee machine stopped whirring. Silence thickened out between them until she felt caught in it like glue. With every moment Lexa didn’t follow up on her words, annoyance simmered closer to boiling point in the pit of her stomach until she finally gave up and turned to leave.

Panicked, Lexa lurched forwards to catch Clarke’s hand, and Clarke hated the way she flinched against the action.

“I owe you an explanation,” Lexa said guiltily.

Forcing herself to relax, Clarke watched the brunette steel herself, her throat tightening around the words she was trying to say until they lodged themselves in her throat and Clarke had to drop her head to catch her wavering eye line.

“Lexa…”

“People don’t like me.”

The admission came suddenly and with the weight of a confession that had been held so long it festered into something aching. Clarke lowered herself to a barstool and regarded Lexa carefully. She wasn’t expecting her explanation to start like that.

“I’m difficult,” Lexa continued, matter-of-fact, “I’ve been told as much. There aren’t many people in my life who have stayed and that’s my fault.” She considered her words. “I think there was part of me that was holding on to her for me, selfishly, because when she was there I learnt how not to be alone.” Lexa locked eyes with Clarke, imploring her to understand. “How not to be…defective.” The toxicity of that word was shocking and Clarke had to curl her fingers around the ceramic of her mug to stop herself launching over the counter to banish it from Lexa’s head. It was so all encompassing sad, her head throbbed with that pain again — tension begging to be released.

“When the accident happened I was angry,” Lexa swallowed and tilted her head upwards slightly, trapping her lip between her teeth, “I was so angry, at her as much as myself, because she left me alone again. And I try, Clarke,” she heaved a thick breath, “god, I try. But it doesn’t —” she grappled uselessly for words, “it doesn’t work? It feels like something gets lost in translation. Like she was the only one who ever understood how I worked.”

Clarke suppressed the spark of jealousy that ignited in her chest and reminded herself playing with matches was dangerous.

“But she wasn’t — isn’t,” Lexa searched her eyes carefully before continuing. “Because you do. And you’re strong, Clarke. You’re so strong, and you’re good and I didn’t want to realise it because,” the words seemed to thicken on Lexa’s tongue and stupid hope bloomed in Clarke’s chest. “I don’t want to lose you.

Clarke almost gasped.

“And I know none of that excuses how I treated you,” Lexa hurried, alarm sending heat shooting up the column of her neck. “I was stupid and selfish, and I wanted to punish myself more than I wanted to see that you were there. It was unacceptable, on so many levels. I’m—”

Adrenaline making her shake, Clarke silenced the intruder floundering in her kitchen with the warm press of lips on hers, chaste and closed mouths. She felt the rush of air leaving Lexa’s chest, and knotted her trembling fingers in the neckline of her sweater, to steel herself as much as to steady the way the Lexa shook with her entire body so that Clarke was worried she would shudder apart beneath her fingers.

“—sorry,” Lexa breathed when Clarke finally disentangled herself to gasp quietly for air against Lexa’s chest.

Clarke peered at her. “I don’t know if I forgive you,” she confided, “yet.”

Lexa nodded, bird mouth and solemn faced in understanding. “But thank you for apologising.” Smoothing her fingers over Lexa’s collarbone, she considered their situation carefully. “And I’m sorry too.”

The last year was messy.

Awfully, unalterably messy in a way that left her unable to right it in her head even more so than the year that had followed Jake’s death. Everything that had happened had blindsided her even when she thought she was expecting it — the memory of standing barefoot in the elevator of Lexa’s building still ached in her chest — but she would be lying if she said she would go back and erase it entirely. If Lexa hadn’t happened Clarke would be enrolled in med school and spending her Friday nights simmering with quiet anger directed towards her mother. All of the unsaid things would have built up to an ugly, heaving boiling point regardless. It was idiotic to think life was a perfect, controllable thing.

“Do you think we could start again?”

Lexa hesitated, then nodded, a smile blooming brilliantly over her lips, then freezing as the shrill ring of her phone shatters the carefully constructed shell of their morning. She shot Lexa an apologetic look and moved away to check the caller ID, heart dropping as she did when she read _‘Abby’_ — the contact name she had changed in a fit of passive aggressive rage after the last time she talked to her mother. “In a few minutes,” she amended guiltily. “It’s my Mom, do you—”

Lexa shook her head quickly, “not at all.”

She retreated behind the counter, fingers working themselves into the sleeves of her sweater as Clarke reluctantly hit answer and gave her a lingering glance before putting the phone to her ear and slipping into the next room.

“Hello?”

_“Clarke, honey. How are you?”_

Opening her mouth, Clarke peered around the doorframe to watch Lexa sip uselessly at her cold coffee. “I’m good,” she decided unsteadily. “I’m good.”

_“That’s good. I’m glad.”_

The silence lingered for longer than Clarke would have allowed if she hadn’t been distracted by Lexa staring, wide eyed, around her kitchen. “Mom is there something you called to tell me?”

 _“Yes,”_ Abby admitted after an awkward fumble. _“I was wondering if you were free this morning?”_

She hesitated, considering, then threw caution to the wind.

“I can be.”

* * *

The coffee house Abby suggested was on Columbus and West 96th — so uncomfortably close to the family home she had been skirting for the better half of three months that she almost considered not going at all.

But her own words rung in her head: _‘I’m old enough to make my own decisions, call me when you can understand that’,_ and she knew she wouldn’t get away with standing her mother up when she was trying to make amends.

Abby was there by the time Clarke herded herself inside, flush cheeked and squirming. She had been reluctant to leave Lexa who seemed to be rallying herself for her own unsavoury adventure but she had insisted, looking unbearably soft swathed in Clarke’s sweater in contrast to the hard determination marring her face, that they each had their own things to put right. Which made Clarke even more nervous for what Lexa was marching off to do. She could only hope it wasn’t to find a bartender who would serve her at eleven a.m.

Abby waved Clarke to the table by the fogging window and the blonde steeled herself, waving back with a tight smile. She slid into the seat opposite and peeled her jacket off.

“I’m glad you came,” Abby said.

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

“I never can tell with you, honey. You have your father’s stubbornness. You could have fled the country for all I know.”

Clarke rose her brows, it was the first time she had willingly brought up Jake since his death — without any of the stiffness or distress that it usually came with. It threw Clarke for a loop.

“How’s Cal?” She asked, eager to change the subject.

“Still trying to weaken my resolve about Aspen.”

“She’s like that.”

Abby smiled. “She says she told you about it. That you’re going to talk me into it?”

“I think you should let her go.”

“I think I will.”

She didn’t know what they were talking about anymore but she didn’t think it was her sisters ski trip.

“Anyway,” Abby folded her napkin between her fingers nervously, “you sounded distracted on the phone, are you okay?”

“Oh,” Clarke brushed her hair behind her ears, wondering if the heat that flared, hot and suddenly, up her neck was visible, “Lexa stayed over. Not like that,” she amended quickly when Abby’s face twisted, “she was drunk. I let her sleep it off.”

“Ah.”

Clarke heaved a sigh. They weren’t getting anywhere.

“Listen, if you’re here to judge me—”

“I’m not, Clarke.”

The waitress approached, asking for Clarke’s order before retreating quickly when the blonde indicated she didn’t want anything.

“Sweetheart,” Abby wrung her fingers together and unwound the tight press of her lips, “you know I love you.”

Clarke nodded slowly, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth like a child as her mother reached into her bag sitting under the table and sliding an A4 envelope across the table. The corners were creased, the contents were thick and the sticker on the front was addressed to a _‘C. A. Griffin’_.

Clarke frowned. “What?”

“Open it.”

Hesitantly, she slipped her thumb under the flap to pry it away from the seal, ignoring the way discomfort swelled, thick and heavy between them. Until finally, the envelope was open and it snapped so quickly the radical change in pressure practically made Clarke’s ears pop. She freed the wad of paper and smoothed it out onto the table to scan it, eyes flicking between the size twelve, Times New Roman printed on NYU letterhead and the expression of quiet hope on her mother's face.

_‘Dear Clarke,_

_Welcome to the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. It is with the greatest enthusiasm that I write to congratulate you on your admission and am delighted at the prospect that you will be joining our community.’_

“Mom, I’m confused—”

“You don’t have to accept it,” Abby explained, “just know that you have options.”

“You applied to art school for me?”

In her three months escape from the world, the deadline for NYU Med had come and gone and she had watched it fly past from a blanket cocoon one Sunday morning with a tub of frozen yogurt in her lap. It had occurred to her for a minute to feel guilty, like her actions were a finger kick in the face to all of the high school teachers and guidance counsellors and good words Kane and her father put in at NYU to get her pre-med. But at that point, she hadn’t had the energy to do anything more about it.

“I pulled some strings at the end of last semester to get the admission through late,” Abby clarified, “your Dad had some favours owing to him at the university, but you got in completely on your own merits, Clarke. Your professor sent me your portfolio, your work is exquisite.”

The paper sat like a peace offering in Clarke’s hands and the knowledge that, despite all of the door-slamming and yelling her mother had actually listened to her, made her want to clutch it to her chest and not let go.

“Thank you, Mom,” the smile she offered was genuine for the first time in what felt like a lifetime stretched out between countless Friday night dinners. She smoothed her fingers over the corners of the letter. “Really.”

 

**_QUEEN INDUSTRIES, NYC, NY_ **

_PRESENT_

It was disconcerting how uncomfortable Lexa felt in her usual armour of pressed trousers and a silk button down after what Anya liked to call her ‘extended sabbatical’.

She hated the phrase personally. After spending so long suppressing her emotions, the fact that the people around her were trying to smooth over the one instance in which she let everything out made her feel more claustrophobic than the collar of her blouse against her collarbone.

She politely declined Anya’s offer to go with her after that — courtroom experience or not.

Adjusting the cuff of her sleeve around her wrist, Lexa tried to smooth over the jagged anxieties that made an untimely appearance as she stood, bracing herself on the sidewalk outside of the space-grey corporate building. Everything about the building was austere and straight laced. The doorman watched her like she was liable to pull off a heist in her carefully picked stilettos.

Taking a deep breath, Lexa let Clarke’s words thicken in her lungs until the air didn’t hurt going in.

_‘Do you think we can start again?’_

Truthfully, she didn’t know if they could. She knew life was messy but she had let these particular shambles fester until it was a putrid, stinking mess and it was up to them — to the amount of work they were prepared to put in — as to whether they would be able to clear it up.

All she did know, was that it started with this.

Baby steps.

The receptionist almost had an aneurysm when Lexa pushed past the front desk, refusing to state whether she had an appointment. “I can’t let you go up,” she said, flustered and reddening behind her thick, square glasses.

Apprehension gnawed at the lining of Lexa’s stomach until it ached but she refused to let her cracks show as she stood in what was effectively the belly of the beast. Instead forced the dusty tone of an executive out of the recesses of her chest, ignoring the way it hurt.

“Then I suggest you tell you CEO to come down.”

The receptionist had the good sense to look scared.

Nia appeared some five minutes later, in a tastelessly expensive dress and six-inch heels worthy of being a trashy action film murder weapon. A scowl twisted her lips so that her lipstick bled. And as if being called down from her cushioned tower of corporate offices wasn’t enough to put it there, Lexa was there to meet her in the middle of her lobby with a pasted-on smile and a manilla envelope pressed between manicured fingers to fool herself into thinking her fingers weren’t shaking.

“Lexa, dear.”

“Nia.” Lexa’s lips turned up in a perfunctory smile. “Kind of you to come down.”

“Kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule,” Nia said wryly, “I hope I’m not taking you away from a line of shots waiting for you at a bar somewhere?”

The cockiness boiled Lexa’s stomach to raw anger but she swallowed the acrid retort on her tongue and handed the envelope over calmly. “I wanted to stop by to let you know you’ll be hearing from my attorney.”

“I’m sorry?”

Any semblance of pleasantry froze into an ice-cold mask on her face. Lexa watched the cracks appear as she tore at the adhesive seal, surely wishing it was Lexa’s neck and not the envelope that was at her mercy. She stacked the wad of paper on top of the mangled envelope and flicked through it, bird-mouthed with stiff movements.

Lexa had asked Clarke for use of her printer before the blonde ducked out, coat-clad and mumbling about how her mother better be ready to apologise or _‘I’m walking out there and then’_. It was completely out of toner, but she managed to salvage some from a draw in the makeshift office and download the relevant documents to her desktop, printing all of the emails Nia had sent her over the course of the summer.

She would have thought for someone so clearly adept at corporate espionage, Nia would have been more careful about leaving evidence. So many people had warned her when her scrappy little start-up begun to draw attention that it would be under Nia’s control within months. Instead, Lexa had surpassed Queen Industries in a year and now had three months of thinly veiled threats to Clarke and Anya’s careers disguised as ‘checking up’ on how Lexa was doing in the wake of Costia’s loss.

It took a moment, but when Nia realised what she was holding the stare Lexa received was cutting.  

She slid the paper back into the envelope and folded her hands primly. “This hardly proves anything.”

That wasn’t a surprise. She had spent enough time around Anya to be familiar with corporate law.

“Be that as it may, I know you Nia,” Lexa lowered her voice, “I know how you run your company.” Nia scowled. “And I know the amount of scrutiny you’ll come under once rumours of blackmail get to the tabloids — _especially_ if they involve me. There’s no way you come out of this unscathed.” She informed the woman coolly. “And I will keep pushing until one day, both of our companies are under my name.”

The papers crushed under Nia’s tightening fist, edges tearing and the sound of it was a sonic boom in the quiet, corporate murmur of the lobby.

For the longest time, being under Nia’s unforgiving thumb had been yet another reason for Lexa to wallow in the wake of the world tumbling down around her ears. The first step to reclaiming her life was getting out from under her thumb — something that she was fully capable of doing from the moment Nia cornered her the morning after Costia’s death, something that every single person in her life knew she was capable of doing, but she herself was too stubborn and childish to do.

The tension between them stretched like a rubber band and Lexa held her breath and waited for it to snap.

Instead Nia tucked the creased paper into the crook of her elbow as she folded her arms.

“Alright,” she conceded like the words curdled on her tongue. “I’ll see you in court.”

She was gone within seconds.

So fast that Lexa was tempted to search the high ceilings of the atrium for any sign of her flying away on her broomstick and trailing green smoke. Anya always had called her the Wicked Witch of the West Side.

The entire lobby had fallen silent. The receptionist, blinking timidly behind the desk, stared at Lexa like she was liable to serve her a subpoena at any given moment, and the employees lingering nearby busied themselves furiously to avoid being accused of eavesdropping, but everyone within a five-mile radius felt the impact of their CEO being put in her place. There was no running from that.

It took Lexa too long to identify the feeling of contentment that burbled in her chest like it wanted to be recognised. It felt like being champagne drunk and slow dancing wrapped in Clarke on the night of the company gala.

For the first time since her life split itself apart at the seams, Lexa had won. She felt drunk on it.

She fished her phone out of her pocket as she turned to exit the building, the weight of exactly one envelope and an entire company lighter than she was when she walked in, and stopped, leaning against the outside of the building to read one new message from the number she could never quite bring herself to delete.

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Clarke_ ** _09/04 12:14 PM]_ Just checking you didn’t get yourself into any trouble?

 

She wasn’t oblivious enough not to realise it was Clarke’s way of checking she hadn’t crawled back into a bottle of cheap vodka. And she would be lying if she said the expectation she had set up didn’t sting. It left her with a desperate need to prove she could be better — and not just to Clarke.

She tightened her grip around her phone and swallowed the champagne bubbles threatening to spin into butterflies in her stomach.

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Clarke_ ** _09/04 12:15 PM]_ I had to take care of some company things.

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Clarke_ ** _09/04 12:16 PM]_ Everything sorted? X

 

The ‘X’ felt hesitant. Lexa could just see Clarke using the minute it had taken to answer to contemplate with her thumb hovering over the keyboard and she couldn’t help the flush that rose to her cheeks.

She hit the call button on a whim and prayed for Clarke to answer.

“Hey?”

Lexa swallowed, “hi.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she dragged a hand through her hair and contemplated the little girl in a pink coat staring at herself in the puddle on the sidewalk. “I picked a fight,” Clarke’s panic was almost audible, “but I handled it.”

“I believe you.”  

There were only two other times Lexa had felt like her whole life was teetering on a knife-edge.

The first was the moment of the crash. Costia screamed. The bonnet of the car concertinaed like a string of paper dolls and drowsiness rendered her incapable of being anything but a passenger in her own body as her girlfriend sunk into unconsciousness and she fought the desperate urge to close her eyes and pretend she was somewhere other than a car wreck with the smell of gas seeping through her clothes.

The second was the first time Clarke had kissed her. She was drunk on cocktails. Clarke giggled in a way that set a feeling unhinged in her chest that hadn’t been touched since she was sixteen-years-old and Costia teased her about her thick-rimmed glasses over soggy cafeteria pizza, so that she was sure the blonde was magic.

She had spent so long convincing herself that both of those moments weren’t actually real, for separate reasons that were both so entirely her. And maybe they weren’t. Maybe the moment of impact was a coping mechanism for something so far out of her control, and maybe Clarke was just as human as everyone else in the club that night. But standing on the sidewalk under clouds in September was about as real and mundane as she could get. This was real. Here and now was realer and more crucial than any other moment had ever been in her life and yet the enormity of it was too much for one person to understand, so she didn’t.  

“Would you like to go on a date with me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. That's it. 
> 
> I'm so so proud of this story, how far it's come from what I first imagined it as, and my ability to actually finish a project I started. Because of that I'm kind of sad to let it go so I'm thinking of doing some more one shots etc. down the line (in my mind they're already married with a kid and she is adorable). Thank you so so much for reading and sticking with this till the end despite the fact that it turned out to be a way longer burn that I expected, it means so much. The epilogue/thing will be up just before Christmas. 
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa is reluctant to go to the annual company Christmas party but Clarke finds ways to persuade her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a present to you all for sticking with this fic till despite the end being a long time coming—also because I realised it had been fifteen chapters and they hadn't interacted as a couple. enjoy!

When Clarke emerges from the dank heat of the subway, it is into a world made of snow.

Grey slush has hitchhiked its way down to the turn style and it clings to the underside of her boots as she pockets her metro card and and jogs up the steps.

Between a gap in the buildings the Rockefeller Christmas tree sits against the backdrop of it’s art deco skyscraper, heralded by two lines of flute-playing angels and it’s all she can see amongst the white glare in the waning six o’clock light. She can hear the squeals of the daredevils in skates whizzing around the ice-rink below and the throaty rumble of jazz covers of Christmas classics through the speakers around the plaza. And honestly, it might be for the better that delays forced her to abandon the M2 before the 42nd street station because New York at Christmas is nothing short of magic.

She is tempted to take the coffee shop specials board up on its offer of an extra-hot gingerbread latte.

Instead, mindful of the time, she cuts across the plaza with her jeans tucked firmly into her boots and her chin swathed in her scarf, taking in the lights and the way the air smells between flakes of snow.

When she was little Jake used to tell her snow was the same as the powdered sugar on donuts.

She would sit under the sill of the window in the living room and peer into the sky in search for godly hands pouring the white powder from the sky like her grandmother would do when she served up pastries and Christmas treats the times they visited her Upstate before she died, but inevitably all she could come up with was aching eyes and he would have to pull her into his lap at Abby’s tutting, and explain the physics of it. At seven-years-old, the scientific explanation was no less extraordinary.

Her heart aches at the thought of another Christmas without him. Four years without him teasing her over ‘god’s divine sugar shaker’ and she longs to tell him everything that has happened in the last twelve months. She wants to tell him she isn’t mad anymore, that she calls her mother weekly not just out of obligation and that last week she took her little sister Christmas shopping and they sat on the fire escape talking until they were almost hypothermic.

She wants to tell him she’s okay.

It’s a ten minute walk to Bryant Park from here. She makes it in eight, pushing herself to stay warm and finds herself red-cheeked and chapped lipped in the lobby of Lexa’s building. She’s only glad she wore her rain boots because she’s tracked in six-inches of slush with her and has to stamp it off on the door mat.

“It’s getting heavier,” the doorman observes from behind the front desk. He’s sorting mail into tennants’ boxes and Clarke has become enough of a permanent installation in the building over the course of the last four months that he hands a stack over for her to take up.

“It’s wonderful,” she grins.

She takes the elevator up and leaves the mail on the counter, stripping her sodden layers off down to her jeans, socks and quarter-zip sweater. Her coat finds a home on the rack next to Lexa’s Burberry plaid.

“Knock knock!”

“Bathroom.”

Her toes curl against the wooden floor in the sagging toes of her socks and she turns up the heating as she walks past the thermostat in the living room.

Lexa is so finicky about these kinds of things she has discovered since she started staying over. She’s been on the Forbes 30 Under 30 twice and yet she is funny about leaving the tap running and insisted tirelessly that she is hardly home anyway so decorating for Christmas would be a waste. Not that that had stopped Clarke from taking it upon herself to do so.

There’s an artificial tree in the far corner that’s decorated with red and white ribbon and the baubles from Macy’s. Leftover tree lights are strung over the ceiling and a garlands sits on the mantelpiece, tangled with seed lights and painted pinecones. Two knitted stockings dangle in front of the glass-encased gas fire, each embroidered with initials that Lexa hid her face in Clarke’s shoulder, chuckling softly when she saw.  

The bedroom is the only place that remained unscathed although tonight it looks like a laundry.

There’s two tailored suit jackets laid out on the comforter — one in navy velvet, the other in understated floral. She finds the ironed shirt hanging off the closet door next to pants and the silky, long-sleeved wrap dress that Harper picked up from the dry cleaner yesterday so it wouldn’t crease before the gala.

She hears Lexa moving around in the ensuite.

“Sorry I’m late. There was a train stopped on the line,” she stows her overnight bag in the half of the walk-in Lexa cleared out for her clothes in such an endearingly Lexa version of giving her her own draw two months ago. “I had to get off at Rockefeller and walk. Do I still have time for a shower?”

Lexa pokes her head through the doorway, rivulets of water running down her neck and wrapped in a towel, another in her hands as she rubs at her wet hair. “If you hurry,” she concedes, “I’m sure Titus will have an aneurysm if we aren’t there by seven.”

Stripping off her sweater, Clarke saunters into the ensuite, closing the door and taking the towel carefully from Lexa’s hands. She lets it fall to the tiles and uses two hands to rake her girlfriends damp locks away from her face, kissing her gently until she feels Lexa soften to putty under her fingers. “Titus isn’t he CEO,” she reminds her.

Lexa groans and lets her head fall to Clarke’s shoulder, she digs her nose into her collarbone and stays there for a moment.

Clarke knows that starting back at work has been literal hell for Lexa. Between Titus not letting her out of his sights — maybe for fear she will disappear again — dealing with a company in hysterics and a legal battle with Nia for the ages, the brunette comes most home most days after Clarke has finished dinner with an apology on her lips only to fall asleep in her lap still in her work clothes. She can feel the guilt Lexa has about it twist in her gut and all she wants to do is let her know she understands.

She tangles her fingers through Lexa’s wet hair and rest her hand at the nape of her neck, sitting her chin on the crown of her head. Lexa is visibly tense despite the warm fog of the bathroom and Clarke is almost sure the prospect of the company Christmas Party being the first corporate event since the media circus of last summer isn’t helping.

“You don’t suppose we’d get away with not going?” Lexa mumbles into her shoulder.

“I think a couple of people would notice,” Clarke pouts in sympathy, tucking stray locks of damp hair behind Lexa’s ear. “Besides, the sooner we do this, the sooner we can get to…other things.”

She smiles coyly and loves the way Lexa’s cheeks pink. How her big bag CEO acts like an embarrassed school girl when Clarke flirts, and has to turn away to compose herself. After so much heartache, it’s side of Lexa like this that Clarke adores exploring.

“Go,” Lexa banishes her to the shower sternly and Clarke gives under her gentle push.

She strips on the bathmat and unfastens her hair from its elastic, turning the tap to scalding and waiting for it to steam. Lexa talks to her through the glass as she gets ready. Insignificant little musings like the fact that Grounders was busy this morning — how she misses their coffee dates now that Clarke is going to art school up on the East Side. How Harper came back complaining that the dry cleaner took a three hour lunch break and how she’s considering changing security companies because the last alarm keeps going off for no reason but what does she think? And it’s so thrillingly mundane that Lexa is even asking her. Domesticity feels like a blanket that she takes eagerly and wraps around herself until it sinks under her skin and becomes hers.

She replies that it sounds like a good idea if it’s bothering her through wicking shampoo from her hair, and Lexa stands up straighter, and more satisfied for it. She goes on to tell Clarke that Anya has abandoned her on Christmas Day this year — her and Raven have plans to escape the city to Tahiti on a last minute whim — and although Lexa is opaque as ever, Clarke can tell she’s sour about it.

She gathers her hair in her hands and squeezes the excess water out before reaching out to grab her towel from the heated rail and wrap herself it it, chewing her lip contemplatively. She wants to tell Lexa that she has been meaning to invite her over for Christmas Day for weeks — months even. But every time she tries to bring it up she stupidly doubts herself. It’s been four months since Lexa asked her out on an official first date and she unalterably, uncontrollably in love with the most mundane and unromantic parts of dating this girl but she doesn’t want to overstep for fear it will send them both back to the tailspin of last summer.

“Clarke?” Lexa is staring at her expectantly, mascara wand in the air. She frowns. “Did I say something?”

“No,” Clarke shakes her head, laughing stupidly. “I was just wondering, would you like to come to my Mom’s on Christmas Day? If you don’t have any plans, that is,” she clarifies, “my Mom isn’t that great of a cook, my Dad always did the dinner, but Kane helps.” She shrugs. “We’d be happy to have your .”

Lexa is staring at her and Clarke gets the awful, stomach curdling feeling that she’s put her foot in it. “What?”

The brunette twists the mascara wand back into it’s bottle and her brow dips delicately like she is trying to decipher code. “Are you sure?” She clarifies carefully, like she is sure Clarke will retreat her offer.   
“Of course.”

“Okay,” she agrees decisively, dipping her chin so she smile isn’t so broad, “then I’d love to.”

Clarke grins. “Amazing.”

She sees the array of lipsticks Lexa has lined up neatly and picks one, tapping the side of the vanity that is clear of flat-irons, curling tongs and makeup. When Lexa looks confused she waves the stick of lipstick and mimes applying it, “c’mon.”

With faux-reluctance Lexa scoots onto the vanity and leans against the mirror. She has dried and done her hair in the time it took for Clarke to shower and now it sits in its styled waves around her shoulders. Clarke sinks her fingers into it, resting her hand on the nape of Lexa’s neck to steady herself as she goes to work but this close, the urge to kiss her is almost irresistible and the burgeoning smile on Lexa’s lips working against her. She uses a makeup wipe to clean up a mistake then brushes their lips lightly enough not to ruin her work.

Lexa slides her arms around her shoulders, crossing it wrists at the nape of her neck and pulling her gently closer. “Thank you, Clarke,” she says, so unbearably sincere and Clarke knows instinctively they’re not talking about the lipstick anymore.

* * *

 Lexa hesitates in the elevator, jaw ticking, scrutinising the seam of the doors. She wonders pointedly when they started playing Christmas jingles instead of the normal music that she doesn’t like and rolls her bottom lip between her teeth.

She hates these things.

Company Christmas parties always feel more akin to lunch in a high school cafeteria than a corporate event and really, it’s only the latter that she knows how to master. Without the restraints of an office environment and the champagne on tap — generously supplied by the company budget she will be scrutinising come Monday morning — she feels like she’s been stripped bare of everything put there to keep her safe, despite her armour in the form of a tailored, velvet suit jacket.

She’s managed to wrangle her way out of the Christmas party for the last two years, but it was Anya this time, and not Titus surprisingly, who told her that after the turbulence of the year she should go and make the rounds.

Clarke winds her fingers through hers and gives her a gentle tug. “Are you coming?”

“Give me a minute,” she requests in a small voice.

Cocking her head in quiet sympathy, Clarke presses the button to close the elevator doors as they attempt to pry themselves open to boast the bedecked top floor of the Woods Corporation. The friendly chatter over canopies and free alcohol is drowned out and Lexa can finally think. She lifts her chin obediently when Clarke brings her hands up to smooth out her bowtie.

“What are you scared of?” She asks calmly, fingers winding themselves in the labels of her jacket.

Lexa makes a noise of contempt. “I’m not scared.”

When Clarke cocks an eyebrow, she pointedly avoids her. She doesn’t need Clarke to tell her that being scared of her own employees opinions of her makes her pathetic. Anya tells her enough that she needs to strap on her big girl shoes and be a CEO and most of the time she does. But the last year has put her through the emotional wringer and she needs a moment not to be strong for being strong's sake.

“Hey.”

She feels a cold hand on her jaw, and lets her girlfriend guide her chin back until she can see the soft smile on her face.

“They won’t think any less of you,” Clarke assures her, fingers winding themselves into the lapels of her jacket. “And if they do, then they’re not worth listening to. Okay?”

Lexa nods.

“Good.” Clarke leans forwards on the toes of her stilettos and kisses her briefly. “Now come on,” she wraps herself around her arm. “Octavia texted me, apparently they have peppermint cocktails.”

They step out of the elevator to brassy Christmas carols and tipsy employees shamelessly and ironically wearing reindeer antlers and floppy santa hats over their formal attire. Only at Christmas, Lexa thinks.

They are barely able to cross the threshold however, before Anya is ambushing them, juggling her champagne flute to give hugs in greeting and inform Lexa that thank god they are here because Titus wants her to make a toast in an hour when everyone has turned up and he wants to talk to her about the Christmas bonus’ over by the bar because she has been unavailable every time he has tried to schedule a meeting this week.

She bites back a retort about how that was for a very good reason.

“I’m going to find some drinks,” Clarke excuses herself with a smile, squeezing Lexa’s hand before she lets go. “Want anything?”

“Champagne, please,” Lexa requests after a moment and Clarke pouts.

“What, no peppermint schnapps?”

“Maybe later.”

That satisfies because Clarke grins and disappears into the throng of people, saying hello to people she recognises along the way and stealing a Santa hat from one.

“Cute,” Anya comments, tilting her glass in the direction Clarke disappeared.

Lexa preens. “She invited me over for Christmas morning provided I don’t have plans,” she boasts, face falling into outrage at the way Anya mimes a gag and rolls her eyes before taking a sip of champagne. “You’re the one who’s ducking out on our standing Christmas night Chinese date,” she accuses, unreasonably protective, “and don’t pretend you and Raven aren’t being disgusting at any moment you can get.”

She catches the smile Anya can’t quite get rid of quick enough and knows she is right. Although Raven and Anya haven’t been as quick to solidify their relationship as her and Clarke, or even Octavia and Lincoln who—having made their way past the stage of wanting jump each other every change they could get, which unfortunately included the middle of the kitchen while Octavia made spaghetti Bolognese for the whole apartment—were making plans to be together at Thanksgiving way back in August, Lexa can see that they were happy around each other.

Not that she would ever give Lexa the satisfaction of knowing, but Anya is definitively smitten with the Latina who is the only girl to date that has been able to keep Anya on her toes. That, the brunette knows for a fact.

She is pulled out of her reverie by the weight of Anya’s hand on her elbow and finds the blonde’s sincere gaze sitting above one of her rare smiles that seem to be reserved for Lexa only.

“I’m proud of you, Lexa.”

Lexa can feel the raw truth of it in her voice. Since she met Anya as an angry seventeen-year-old with something bigger than herself to prove, it has been all she ever needed to have the blonde on her side. She feels the affirmation sing in her chest, clearing the suffocating claustrophobia that made it difficult to breathe.

“Also.” Anya hands her her champagne to hold while she digs through her suede clutch in search of something. She brightens when she finds it and exchanges her glass for a folded slip of paper that has seen more than a few bad days. It’s creased and has a speck of brown marring the corner, but Lexa recognises it instantly. Her stomach bottoms out.

“You kept it?”

Anya waves off the awe in her eyes. “Don’t go getting sentimental,” she commands, lifting a finger from the stem of her glass to point an accusatory finger. “I kept it to say I told you so.”

“Have I told you how much I love your vulnerable side?” She pastes on a sarcastic smile but considers the slip of paper in her fingers, opening it out to read the words over, then slipping it inside the lined pocket of suit jacket. “Thank you,” her voice softens and Anya nods, raising her glass slightly.

“Here’s to a better year,” she says.

Spying Clarke making her way back from the bar, drinks in hand and candy cane clenched between her teeth before she left her clutch with Lexa and it was the next best thing, she nudges Lexa’s arm with an elbow. “I better find Raven. I’ll see you before you leave.”

Clarke finds her flush cheeked and balancing intricate looking cocktails in her hands, one of which—a decidedly not champagne looking one with it’s rim ‘salted’ with crushed up peppermints—she hands to Lexa. The bobble on her pilfered Santa hat dangles in front of her eyes and with her now free hand she bats it away. “It’s a ‘White Christmas’,” she explains to the way Lexa peers at her drink in confusion. “Champagne and white creme de cacao. I had the bartender make it ‘specially. Drink up.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Lexa takes a sip and lets the bubbles fizz on her tongue, pleasantly surprised even though she knows it is just another one of Clarke’s attempt to get her in the festive spirit after her admission to not really ‘doing’ Christmas when the blonde asked why there were no decorations stashed in the hall cupboard.

Gloating, Clarke loops her arm through Lexa’s and pulls her into the fray, an arm on the small of her back in wordless encouragement as Lexa reluctantly reclaims the shackles of CEO’s and circulates through the throng of her employees, commenting on the abundance of snow, congratulating on work done and ohing over wallet-sized grade school photos. She does what she remembers Costia doing when they used to come to these things; remembers kids birthdays and where certain people are disappearing to over the days they have taken off during Christmas and New Year. And with every word it hurts less to think about the way Costia used to laugh when Lexa was flustered, because Clarke keeps a hand smoothing up and down her arm and she feels so utterly content that small talk comes less wrenched and reluctant and more naturally.

By the time she’s fulfilled her duties as CEO, Clarke is holding up the line for the photo booth with Octavia and Lincoln who—sweet and patient as ever—is being draped in feather boas and other photo booth props in various Christmas themes. He sends a pitiful look Lexa’s way and she raises her glass towards him with a smirk before going in search of Titus.

* * *

 Clarke finds her, flush cheeked and grinning an hour later with two photo booth print outs pinched between her fingers and an empty white martini glass that she sets down at the bar. 

“Did Lincoln finally tap out?” Lexa asks, taking a sip of her drink. After her lengthy conversation with Titus, which involved way too much business talk for a holiday event and completely ruined the festive spirit she found herself in because of the garlands and mistletoe strung around the room, she had retreated to the bar in search of a well deserved reward.

If it was possible he was even more neurotic than he was before she almost gave the company away to her competitor.

“He dotes on Octavia,” Clarke smiles softly at the pair who are clinched into each other on the makeshift dance floor as the DJ cranks down the music from the night into softer classics. “Plus it’s Christmas.” She gets a devilish look on her face and slips her pointer finger under the knot of Lexa’s bowtie, a smile turning her lips up as she pulls the CEO closer until Lexa can feel her breath.

The kiss is sweet. Clarke tastes like white chocolate liquor and Lexa widens her mouth to lick the peppermint salt clinging to her top lip, swallowing the way the blonde giggles into it. She slips a hand around the nape of Lexa’s neck, fingers catching on the baby hairs there, and resting their foreheads together when she stops to breathe.

“Hey,” she whispers.

“What?”

Unwinding one hand from the lapel of Lexa’s jacket, Clarke lifts one finger to point upwards. Brow dipping in confusion, Lexa looks up to see a sprig of mistletoe hanging by a length of satin ribbon from the pendant light and laughs. “You did that on purpose didn’t you?”

Clarke giggles. “Sh,” she hushes Lexa, then leans over the bar while the bartender is busy serving someone and Lexa leaps up to grab the back of her dress before she does head first onto the floor on the other side. Alarmed, she acts as lookout as Clarke picks through the half-full bottles of liquor and slides back to her seat, an opened bottle of peppermint schnapps in her hands.   
“It’s later,” she decides, unscrewing the cap and pouring some into both of their empty glasses. “Merry Christmas.”

Lexa lifts the rim of her glass slightly to let it clink with Clarke’s and appreciates the cool burn the sip causes going down. She doesn’t think she’s had this since Anya got her drunk one Christmas at Stanford because she refused to leave her dorm room.

Clarke scoops her hair off her right shoulder so she can tuck her head into the crook of Lexa’s neck, snuggling into her side as they watch the party get rowdier the later it gets. Wisps of blonde tickle her chin and she turns to press a kiss to the crown of Clarke’s head. A new emotion swims in her chest with each peppermint scented breath she takes—each with Christmastime memory of empty college dorms and watching the city light up from behind a desk laden with enough work to keep her in the office until the day after New Years. They are thick and pervasive, knocking on the inside of her skull like she is supposed to piece them together in a sort of Dickens-esque revelation but she is too comfortable here, Clarke tucked into her arms, to acknowledge the niggle in the back of her head.

She remembers her roommate in junior year leaving for the holidays talking about her hometown and her baby brother’s favourite show, how she paused in the midst of packing to ask what Lexa’s plans were, and she retreated to the library to get out from the way her sympathetic gaze made it hard to breath after she admitted she was staying at school for the holidays.

She had Anya, she would tell herself the days she came back to an empty dorm room. She had Anya who would take her out for Chinese and let her watch rented Christmas movies on the box TV that came as a privilege of the room the university provided her for TA-ing. But it always felt like the blonde was trying to make up for the lack of a home cooked meal and a childhood bedroom to spend the holidays in and Lexa could always tell that neither of them were exactly happy.

They made do.

It occurs to her suddenly that she doesn’t have to make do anymore. She thinks the reason she put herself into self-imposed isolation every twenty-fifth of December was because on some level she was jealous. But she has her girlfriend now, who kisses her under the mistletoe and steals peppermint schnapps from behind bars and she doesn’t have to make do anymore than she has to pretend she’s happy with watching ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ in an empty Berkeley dorm room.

She pokes Clarke under the rib and delights in the way her girlfriend squirms, tipsy and handsy and wanting to be closer to her. “Do you want to leave?” She asks quietly. Titus has been inching ever nearer like he can tell she seconds away from making a mad dash for the exit.

Clarke turns to her. “Now?” She whispers, conspiratorially and Lexa nods.

“It’s their Christmas Party,” she gestures to her employees making the most of the open bar and DJ table. “They don’t want their boss here.” She threads her fingers through Clarke’s. “Let’s go.”

She texts Anya that she is leaving and they skirt the edges of the party until they’re out of Titus’ eye line, then dash to the coat room under the cover of the crowd, rifling through racks of overcoats and jackets until Clarke finds the one that matches her tag and she rips it off the hanger without putting it on or alerting the assistant who watches them with confusion.

Lexa is on edge the entire elevator ride, feeling like a teenager doing something decidedly illegal. She didn’t know why sneaking out of her own party was an act of rebellion but it felt like one as she watched the floors tick down with Clarke’s chin hooked around her shoulder, cheeks flushed from the alcohol and breathing peppermint into her ear.

“Where’re we going?” She giggles when Lexa walks swiftly through the lobby and out of the building to hail a cab.

“It’s a surprise,” she tells her.

The snow is falling again but it is lighter than it was earlier. Looking up at the sky, they watch the flakes linger, as if suspended in time and dyed with the blinking neon lights of the restaurant across the road. Clarke tilts her head back, blonde locks spilling down her back as she does and sticks her tongue out as far as it can go, eyes screwed shut and breath held in anticipation. She has two flakes on her lips by the time a yellow taxi pulls up against the curb.

Lexa speaks to the driver, then opens the door for her girlfriend and Clarke makes her sit in the middle seat instead of by the window so that they’re squashed together in the dank back seat of the cab and Clarke can poke her freezing cold nose into Lexa’s shirt-clad collarbone. She curses softly in fright, then takes Clarke’s hands in her own, rubbing her fingers between her palms and holding them inside of her suit jacket to warm her up.

“I told you to dress warmer,” she cajoled the popsicle sitting next to her.

Clarke hums, but Lexa can feel the smile against her chest. “Who needs gloves when I have you,” she mumbles grinning, “my personal space heater.”

“If you go hypothermic don’t come crying to me,” Lexa huffs. She squirms as Clarke digs her fingers into her sides and tries to bat them away. This close all they can do is fumble and giggle, foreheads bumping and limbs tangled while the driver rolls his eyes at them in the wing mirrors and has to rap a knuckle on the half open partition to alert them that they are at their destination.

This late, Rockefeller Plaza isn’t as busy as it was this afternoon.

Lexa tugs Clarke past the dim windows of Michael Kors and down into the concourse where she exchanges money for two passes for the latest session and two pairs of skates, one of which she gives to Clarke who is looking at her with something soft and unplaceable in her eyes.   
“What?” She asks as Clarke takes the skates, hooking her fingers into the laces.

Clarke shakes her head, tucking her hair behind her eyes with her free hand. “You can’t skate,” she says, cocking her head in question.

It had come up in late November when Clarke would stand and watch them erect the winter village down in Bryant Park on the way to Lexa’s. You could see the ice rink from Lexa’s window and when Clarke had mentioned hiring skates one day she had come up with every excuse under the sun as to why it was a bad idea until eventually Clarke wheedled the real reason out of her and laughed for a minute straight, then comforted her girlfriend with soft cuddles and an apology through her giggles when it was clear it bruised her ego to admit she was incapable of doing something.

“I’m sure it can’t be too hard,” Lexa explains bashfully. It’s simple physics. Lexa is good at physics, unlike the messy complexity of feelings she knows how forces work and its wonderfully straight forwards.

Clarke laughs and finds an empty bench to sit down out, shimmying out of her heels to slip her feet into the skates and Lexa does the same. They smell musty and feel faintly damp in her hands, but she takes off her heels and tugs them on regardless if only for the sparkle in Clarke’s eyes as she stands up, balancing expertly on the blades.

They stash their belongings in the provided cubbies and shuffle-step to the edge of the rink where Clarke steps out, gliding easily to the railing and Lexa follows decidedly less elegantly. Her stomach bottoms out as her feet fly out from beneath her and her hand flies out to clutch for Clarke who steadies her with a grin and her tongue between her teeth. Clarke readjusts her grip so that she has each of Lexa’s hands in her own and they’re facing each other and Lexa feels a little more stable for it.

She thinks she remembers going to a fourth grade birthday party at an indoor rink when she was ten. The skates were too big for her feet and every time she tried to move her feet would skid out from between her until she was forced to spend the better half of two hours clinging to the railing with numb fingers. This feels different.

The cold stings in her chest every time she breathes in, but she can feel the warmth of Clarke’s palm hooked into her own and the way her breath plumes in front of her mouth when she gives little words of encouragement until they’re inching their way slowly across the ice and away from the way the snow has piled up on the side of the rink.

This feels safe, she thinks. That’s the difference.

Once Lexa feels steady enough Clarke glides a few feet ahead, expertly swerving to a halt with a twist of her feet and looking back. “My Dad used to take me to Central Park every Christmas to skate,” she admits, eyes alight.

Lexa takes a few experimental strides forwards and Clarke glides backwards, hand held out teasingly.   
“I wish I knew your Dad. I love the way you talk about him.”

“He would have loved you,” Clarke smiles fondly. “He used to act tough around my dates but he was a big softie at heart. My Mom’s the hard ass.”

Lexa pulls a face. “I look forwards to that come Christmas day.”

A kid whizzes past them, kicking up shaved ice from his blades and Lexa stumbles away from the shock of it. Alarmed, she reaches out for Clarke who wraps her arms easily around her waist and kisses her nose. “I think she’s forgiven you for leading me astray,” she smirks, “if not I have every faith you’ll charm her like you did me.”

“Yeah, with my stellar coping mechanisms and astounding capacity for emotional reasoning.”

“Hey,” Clarke coaxes her jaw upward with a freezing fingers and Lexa complies albeit begrudgingly. “We were both to blame,” she insists. “But it’s Christmas, and we don’t dwell on that any longer than we have to.”

Lexa nods and leans in to catch Clarke’s lips. Her breath is warm and Clarke tastes like peppermint schnapps when Lexa sucks at her bottom lip. Everything feels cold and sharp in, in HD focus in a way it hasn’t before.

She thinks about this time last year when she was sat in the Chinese restaurant down the street from the office with Anya. How they were picking over meals they ordered a thousand times before and complaining about the Christmas Eve traffic and the way the waitress greeted them with unflinching familiarity made her feel pathetic, most of the reason why she stormed out after a petty fight with Anya without saying goodbye.

Clarke leans back to gulp in air, dragging her nose down the length of Lexa’s, fingers fastening themselves around her waist. In a fumble of limbs and trying to stay upright, Lexa pulls the slip of paper from her pocket and opens it in her hand.

“What’s this?” Clarke pants slightly, breath plumbing between them. She takes the paper from between Lexa’s fingers and smooths it out in her own.

“Anya and I used to go out for Chinese on Christmas Eve,” Lexa explains. “Last Christmas, I made her swap cookies with me because mine was broken and this,” she gestures to the paper in Clarke’s hands, “was the fortune in the broken one.”

“ _‘All things are difficult before they are easy.’_ ” Clarke reads in a voice so soft it solidifies for a moment then disappears like her breath. She looks up at Lexa like she wants to smooth away the stupid heartache that the brunette can feel eroding away at their perfect night.

“She insisted it was mine,” Lexa tugs then threads a finger through the knot in her bowtie, loosening it until it falls apart and dangles around her neck. She feels like she’s choking and the cold air beating on her chest is making her light headed. “And I got so mad at her because I already thought things were as bad as they could get and they weren’t getting better. And for the longest time they didn’t…until you.”

Clarke smoothed her hand over the velvet of her undone bowtie, encouraging her with the gentle movements and Lexa doesn’t think she has ever been so dizzyingly, head-over-heels, madly in love. The urge to wrap herself entirely in Clarke, to press her so close she can feel the beat of her heart and every dip and curve of her body, was so strong it almost blinded her.

“I love you.” The words run away with her before she can stop them until they are their own entity altogether. “So much. More than I ever thought was possible and sometimes it’s so overwhelming I don’t know what to do. All I know is that I never want it to go away because for the first time in so long, I honestly feel happy.”

When she’s done she sucks in a breath and lets the reality of her monologue settle over her.

Clarke grins, blindingly wide and Lexa can feel the happiness radiating off of her in waves. “I love you too.” She presses a kiss to Lexa’s chin. “And I’ll love you tomorrow—” a kiss to her cheek, “—and I’ll love you the day after that—” a kiss to her eyelid, “—and the week after that—” a kiss to her nose, “—and the year after that. And after that—” she lingers, a hair away from their lips meeting and it’s all Lexa can do not to lean desperately forward and end herself in a kiss, “—I’ll love you forever still.”

Finally Clarke reaches her lips and Lexa feels like she’s breathing for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated :)


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